tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309663644247115378.post5726094235831430504..comments2015-10-28T20:55:42.025-07:00Comments on Parthenon: Brain on rape.Agishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01074828202399142807noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309663644247115378.post-49188548684696010002012-02-08T17:35:45.462-08:002012-02-08T17:35:45.462-08:00great points all around. It's an issue that s...great points all around. It's an issue that seems so clear. Shift the focus in rape on the perpetrators. The resistance to this kind of shift is, in and of itself, significant evidence of exactly what Themistocles is saying in the first comment. <br /><br />It's even more frustrating when realizing that the slutty clothes things is complete bullshit on its face. The existence of rape in countries where women are entirely prevented from dressing slutty, shows that teaching young ladies to "behave" really does nothing to prevent rape.Agishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01074828202399142807noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4309663644247115378.post-70478935516832270592012-02-08T14:36:31.530-08:002012-02-08T14:36:31.530-08:00I don't have too much to add, but I wanted to ...I don't have too much to add, but I wanted to start with an article I found. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199211/round-rapists<br /><br />Yes, it's 20 years old and short, but I think it crystallizes the kind of factual research that you're talking about, and I'm going to expound on it slightly. Especially Type 2, because I think that's what you're focusing on here.<br /><br />Type 1 is relatively easy to dismiss: this is the rapist as mentally ill; essentially similar to a pedophile as much as a criminal. The definition there is of someone who specifically experiences arousal at the concept of rape. Psychological conditions are not easy to diagnose, nor are their causes obvious, but generally, this case seems to have little to do with the social world and more to do with brain disorder. Type 4 is also essentially a sociopath, whose problems are personal. These rapists rarely earn any supporters, and are going to attack when attacks are available.<br /><br />Types 2 and 3 are more complex, and I think they're hard to completely divorce from sexuality. They act not based on psychological disordering but on social conditioning: their sense of entitlement or superiority, their misogyny, and their social constructions of their sexuality.<br /><br />Type 3 rapists are acting on nigh-psychotic rage, which is definitely a product of certain imagined wrongs. Clearly based on society (and likely, various forms of sexual rejection) but still not fundamentally based in sexuality, so much as a tight nexus.<br /><br />Type 2 rapists apparently fundamentally construct rape and sex as interchangeable. They don't believe that consent is meaningful, or rather, they don't believe that it's something subjective, to be given or refused. The article describes them as misinterpreters, meaning here they will seize on a number of things as expressions of consent. <br /><br />I think this is where "slutty clothing" might come into play, as a possible misinterpretable expression of consent. But there's no reason to think it stops there: surely, any expression of friendliness, attraction, or tolerance could be "misinterpreted" as consent. So if all positive interactions could be categorized as provoking these rapists, we would be forced to tell people if they didn't want to get raped, they ignore all with a cultivated air of pure hostility. It's an abjectly absurd requirement, and proves that our societal focus should be on perpetrators rather than victims.<br /><br />Tied to this–and further evidence of the importance of focusing on rapists instead of victims–is the reasoning that keeps "yes or no" from entering this rapist's view of consent. These assailants see masculinity as a desire of conquest, and femininity, therefore, as a desire to be conquered. Therefore women *can't* verbally consent to sex, because it would be unfeminine. Instead, they're expected to resist, but not too much, if everything goes according to plan. Given how meaningless "not too much" is, rapists in this mode will easily ignore resistance. There is an enormous amount of culture pressing in this direction: rapists don't come to this opinion by momentary epiphany. It's buried in everyone who asks for a return to 50s values, where women are "gatekeepers" of sexuality, and are supposed to say no, and then submit, instead of consent. It's not just in culture aimed at men either, of course: women are often given these messages even more consistently, both directly and in media. <br /><br />This culminates when they're told not to wear slutty clothes, because rapists will come after them. This furthers a game of conquest and signalled submission, because it asserts that fundamental point: you can be deemed to consent simply by engaging with the world.Mikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05900674042716762854noreply@blogger.com