Dworkin Rolls in Grave

Andrea Dworkin is no doubt rolling in her grave.

Australian researchers are about to publish a study which says that "mainstream pornography in Australia doesn't represent women as sex objects". Indeed, it "shows them as active sexual agents". In addition to looking at the pr0n itself, the study showed some surprising results about the consumer:

Interim results released in 2003 on the content of pornographic movies found super-size breasts scare some men, conservative voters love dirty magazines and adult videos have realistic plots.

Dr Alan McKee said those initial results had shattered the "dirty old man in a trenchcoat" stereotype of pornographic consumers.

Of the 320 respondents who said they used mainstream porn, 20 per cent were younger women, 33 per cent were married, 93 per cent believed in gender equality and 63 per cent considered themselves to be religious.

This is just a brief article, of course, and I haven't read the entire study so I'm not sure what else it reveals. (Nor have I read the report of the Meese Commission on Pornography.) Plus the study looks at mainstream pr0n and not some of the more hard-core stuff which portrays, amongst other things, rape. For any locals, one anti-pr0n argument comes in the form of the film Not a Love Story which features scenes shot right here in Madison. A bit out-dated, perhaps, but it still embodies many of the arguments made against pornography.

Personally, I like pictures of nekkid fraus and I haven't seen any definitive proof that consumption of pr0n makes individuals rape, undergirds our "rape culture", et al. Then again, I haven't read all the literature on the subject.

There was a recent poll done in the UK which has some surprising (for me, anyway) and disturbing results. For instance, 22% felt that, if a woman had "many" sexual partners, then this placed some of the responsibility for being raped on the woman. Just prior to the outcry about such attitudes on various feminist blogs, a very interesting dialogue appeared on Alas! (A Blog) in an entry called "On victim-blaming and control". Especially revealing for me were the comments of "Q Grrl". Q Grrl holds the standard view of rape as having absolutely nothing to do with sex. Some choice quotes:

"Rape is a social control — whether it is stranger or aquaintance [sic] rape."

It is a socially condoned use of force that works to control women’s sexuality and women’s role in the social fabric."

Again, rape is not so much an individual act, but a socially condoned act."

If you are not actively working to deconstruct a male sexuality founded on rape (virgin/whore dichotomy for women), then you are indeed benefiting from the fact that many men do rape."

"…do men have better employment opportunities, access to resources, access to recreation, access to politics, access to legislative opportunities because women are threatened with rape if they use public space in the same way men do?"

This last one humored and disgusted me greatly. She maintains that women don't run for political office for fear of being raped. Are there any women readers here who can personally vouch that, while they want to run for office, they don't because they fear rape? Have any female politicians gone on record as saying that they recognized the threat of rape in running for office but ran anyway? And how does one go about "deconstructing male sexuality"?

Does anyone else find it odd that the she claims rape has nothing to do with sex and is all about social control, yet its male sexuality that is the problem? I can't help but think of Steven Pinker's comment:

But the fact that rape has something to do with violence does not mean it has nothing to do with sex, any more than the fact that armed robbery has something to do with violence means it has nothing to do with greed.

How can one keep a straight face and say that an act of sex has nothing to do with sex yet is rooted in sexuality? Is rape really like quantum physics where all of our notions of common sense and causality are thrown aside? This webpage features some statistics about rape compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice. Take this statistic:

The income level of the "average victim" is very low with most victims coming from homes with incomes under $10,000 a year. Women from low income households are 4 times as likely to experience violence of any sort than women in the income bracket above $50,000 (Craven, 1996).

If rape is only a form of social control imposed on women by men, then why are "average" victims poor? In other words, if rape is about protecting patriarchy, as Q Grrl seems to assert, then why are wealthier women, who would be more of a threat to patriarchy, raped less frequently? Maybe this is a subterfuge by us men. We let those uppity women who slip through the cracks go so as to give the illusion that there's equality, that there's no "rape culture". You know how cabals work – just watch The X-Files. And why do men rape girls? Are these rapes preventative? Do men seek to rape young girls so they know from the outset who is in control and that they learn their place early? Or perhaps such sexual abuse involves (gasp!) sex – perhaps just like when men rape adult women.

The following statistic comes from a West Virginia University webpage:

75-90% of all sexual assaults on campus are alcohol or drug-related (Warshaw, 1988; Califano)

Somebody explain to me the patriarchy's mechanism which brainwashes college men into raping college women when the either they or the women are drunk or both. Perhaps the Lockean contract negotiations by which a man is to gain consent for sex with a woman breaks down after a couple dozen beers and a few shots of tequila which transform our "rational agents" into puddles. Other animals on this planet rape as well – it is not a uniquely human endeavor – including birds, insects, and some of our fellow simians. Are these creatures mere actors in a patriarchal tragedy as we men are supposed to be? Many on the Left, including feminists, like to chide the Bush administration for its "American exceptionalism", i.e. – that America is a totally unique instance in the history of mankind. Yet many of these same people turn around and invoke exceptionalism for our species. I get the impression that many of these folks think that, because we are really good tool-makers and have morality, that we have nothing in common with those creatures who sit more towards to roots of the evolutionary tree than we do. Despite the many great accomplishments of mankind such as McDonalds, reality TV, and the Brazilian wax, we are still apes. Unique in many ways, to be sure, but still apes. Our shit stinks too. Jane Goodall was on Democracy Now! yesterday and gave a few examples of how various animals are like us humans. (Her justification of the statement that pigs are intelligent involved a porcine computer user. It forced me to wonder about certain human computer users I know…) I think it would behoove us to occasionally stop anthropomorphizing animals and instead look at how we are like them. I have read nothing that gives credence to the idea that our slates were wiped clean when we became homo sapiens. Indeed, the situation only became more complicated. Just because sex is natural does not mean that every instance of it is good and healthy. Arsenic occurs naturally too. It is quite a feat of the intellect of our species that some of us can take an act of sex borne out of sexuality and remove the sex from it.

Pinker also refers to feminist Wendy McElroy:

As the equity feminist Wendy McElroy points out, the theory holds that "even the most loving and gentle husband, father, and son is a beneficiary of the rape of the women they love. No ideology that makes such vicious accusations against men as a class can heal any wounds. It can only provoke hostility in return."

If you're going to go around labeling all men rapists and/or beneficiaries thereof, how can you reasonably expect to go about "deconstructing male sexuality" other than by the Ludovico Treatment? I don't have the answer to stopping rape but one thing we can do is stop telling 18 year-old men entering college that they are rapist scumbag tools of the patriarchy. Another thing we can do is roundup all those people who think that having had many sexual partners makes a woman partially to blame for her rape and give them a collective punch in the nose. How stupid are you? What does this have to do with rape? I think the best way to teach men not to rape isn't to just teach that message but to instill healthy attitudes about the motivations that lie underneath – both about sex and power because I think rape is about both.

Since rape is overwhelmingly committed by men, we need to address their sexuality, not as a tool of the patriarchy, but as part of our humanity. We can start by getting rid of this attitude that sex is nothing but a way to get an infection and an unwanted pregnancy instead of teaching that a good, healthy sex life is a near-imperative. Saying that sex should wait until marriage is another way of saying that sex is awful and that you need reinforcements to handle the fallout. We have poll after poll which indicate that 90%+ of men (99%+ for teenaged boys, no doubt) are masturbationaholics yet talking about onanism is virtually taboo. Just ask Jocelyn Elders. We need more people like her. There should be compulsory masturbation laws for boys. Women have lactation rooms where they can go pump breast milk – give men rooms where they can go jack off. (And women too.) They don't need to be fancy or particularly comfortable. A plain, small room with a couch, some magazines, and a tissue dispenser will do fine. Let's legalize and regulate (and tax) prostitution too. It should be an honored and respected vocation. Nobody puts down restaurant owners for fulfilling a basic human need for money so we shouldn't be doing that to prostitutes. Imagine a school system that doesn't hide sexuality and actually educates kids on it. Boys get spontaneous erections. Johnny Second-Grader will be sitting in class and then pitch a tent for no reason at all. He'll be embarrassed and ashamed, seeking to hide it. And I'll bet you a dollar to a doughnut that he has absolutely no idea why he feels that way. Imagine all the teenage boys going into a classroom with a male teacher who, instead of preaching abstinence or giving a clinical description of the mechanics of sex, welcomes the young men in adulthood and to the Masturbation Club. Why does our society generally shame kids when they become sexually mature or just ignore the event and let them figure things out on their own? All joking and exercises of the imagination aside, I think it is absolutely absurd to separate sex from sexuality with all the precision of a surgeon. Sexuality is more than sex but without it, it's not sexuality.

We must also remember that men rape other men and boys as well. I find it dubious to say the least that a Catholic priest having his way with an altar boy is somehow an expression of power over women. What about male prisoners who rape fellow inmates? Are they all gay? Or do they rape only in a bid for power? I'm inclined to think that power is often involved but also that sex is also a motivating factor since there are no women available. When ostensibly heterosexual men rape other males, we include sexual desire in our explanations. (Not that the sexual desire of a man for a boy is considered good or healthy.) But when heterosexual men rape women, the glaringly obvious desire of these men to have sex with women is whisked away by Q Grrl & her ilk and left out of any explanation for the behavior of those men.

Why do some men not rape? Never having raped a woman, I can vouch that I never stood to the side and thought, "Well, I just let those other guys rape and I'll reap the benefits of their actions". I am part of the same patriarchal culture as the rapists so why do I not rape women? I watched the same television programs and the same movies produced by this "rape culture" so what happened? I tend to think of this "rape culture" idea as being like "Intelligent Design". That women are not considered equals, indeed – they are treated like chattel, etc. is so anathema to everything they believe in that it is surely evidence that of a intelligence behind it all. And so it's a conspiracy behind which is men. Andrea Dworkin said that "forced sex is not incidental to male sexuality but is in practice paradigmatic." Male sexuality is inherently and thoroughly evil, in other words. "Rape culture" advocates remove sex from male sexuality and add a nebulous puppet master. Sexuality, whether male or female, is a vast spectrum of attitudes, desires, and, consequently, actions. I would argue that the desire to have sex with someone is amoral as is the act of coitus when devoid of context. (Consensual sex is good while coerced sex is bad.) People are neither entirely good nor bad. Rape is an act of violence and about power. But it's also about sex and the breakdown of moral restraint. Everyday millions of people who would never think of walking into a store and stealing a CD commit theft by downloading music. Regardless of the actions of the recording industry, it is theft. No one is physically hurt in the process and the consequences are much less dire than are those of, say, rape. Yet the moral concept of "stealing is wrong" breaks down and greed prevails. I'm not trying to trivialize rape but rather I'm saying that a similar breakdown happens with regards to rape and that one component of rape is fulfilling the desire for sex. Just as no one has the right to steal music, no one has the right to have non-consensual sex. Men who rape are deplorable. In addition, it is also deplorable when individuals and the media place the onus of rape on a woman instead of a man. No woman wants to be raped thusly her clothing, level of intoxication, and sexual history are not relevant.

There are over 6 billion people on this planet and this isn't the case because sex is a choice on par with chocolate or vanilla. It's because our desire to express our sexuality is primal, deep-rooted, and pervasive. While I'm not saying that men are nothing but a bunch of brutes who can only be trusted to put their penises in a bodily orifice, I find this bit of hyperbole closer to the truth than the image of a celibate priest. The challenge of preventing rape involves a number of things. Perhaps the easiest changes we could make are in our legal system. Make it mandatory that DAs bring rape cases to trial, for instance, and ensure that the bullshit like a woman's sexual history are excluded from the proceedings. And while teaching men to be respectful and not to rape is a necessity, you can do that until you're blue in the face but it still won't be enough. Jesus was pretty clear about being nice to one another yet this doesn't stop many Christians from treating their fellow human beings like crap. We huddle around our televisions and watch a National Geographic show featuring two lions clawing at each other over a lioness and think "we're not like that". We humans are just like that. It is the height of arrogance to think that sexual competition just disappeared in an evolutionary poof of feminist logic. Today we deny men are by their natures more aggressive and more competitive than women (generally) and are off on some fool's errand to wipe an imaginary slate clean only to write "I WILL NOT RAPE" on it. Instead we ought to think about ways to set up a system of checks & balances to deal with male aggression and competitive drives. No woman, excepting if she were a true pacifist (a truly untenable position) would have a problem with one man being aggressive in her defense. The trick is to divert, restrict, and harness male impulses towards such desirable ends because we can't get rid of the impulses themselves.

Whew! Got waaay off track.