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July
Ch. 6) The Politics and Psychology of Rape, Sex,
and Love
Excerpts from Does
Feminism Discriminate Against
Men? A debate by Warren Farrell
"Men who are unjustly accused of rape can
sometimes gain from the
experience."[i] - Vassar
College Assistant Dean of Students
Is Rape An Outgrowth Of Male Power?
MYTH. Rape is a manifestation of male
political and economic power.
FACT. Any given black man is three times
as likely to be reported a rapist as a white
man.[ii]
Do blacks suddenly have more political and
economic power? Maybe rape does not derive from
power, but rather from powerlessness.
Is Rape An Outgrowth Of Male
Violence?
MYTH. Rape has nothing to do with sexual
attraction—it is just an act of
violence.[iii] This is
"proven" by the fact that women of every age are
raped.
FACT. Being at the age of greatest sexual
attraction makes the chances of being raped at
least 8400% greater than being over fifty.[iv]
When a woman is between ages 16 and 19, her
chances of being raped are 84 in 20,000; when she
is between 50 and 64, her chances are less than one
in 20,000.[v] Sexual
attraction, then, does have something to do with
who is raped.
What are we really doing when we ignore the role
of sexual attraction? We are ignoring our
responsibility as a culture for reinforcing men's
addiction to female sexual beauty and then
depriving men of what we've helped addict them to.
We will not be willing to stop reinforcing men's
addiction to beautiful women until we are willing
to stop the benefits that beautiful women receive
when men's addiction gets boys and men to perform
for women, pay for women, pursue women, and give
women the option to raise money or raise children
even as he has no option but to raise money.
Men’s Experience of Pursuing, Paying and
Performing
While the label "date rape" has helped women
articulate the most traumatic aspect of dating from
women's perspective—and helped attentive men
understand that date rape can be as traumatic as
stranger rape since it is a violation of trust--
men have no labels to help them articulate the most
traumatic aspects of dating from their perspective.
Now, of course, the most traumatic aspect is the
possibility of being accused of date rape by a
woman to whom he thought he was making love. If men
did label the worst aspects of the traditional male
role, though, they might label them "date
rejection," "date robbery," "date fraud," and "date
lying."
150 Risks of Rejection: The Anatomy of the
Journey from Eye Contact to Intercourse
A study conducted by two feminists found nearly
40% of college women acknowledged they had said
"no" to sex even "when they meant yes."[vi]
Whether it’s called dating, “hanging
out,” or “hooking up,” someone has
to take the risk of the first kiss, first tongue
kiss, and so on. Most women sense that if they
don’t stop the tongue kiss at some point, the
journey from tongue kiss to intercourse is only
about a ten minute ride. So she says “no”
by withdrawing her tongue from time to time. And
then, instead of saying, “when I’m ready
to go beyond this, I’ll let you know,”
the man is expected to guess whether the
“no” means no forever, until the next
date, whether she’s fulfilling a social
expectation to say “no” and really wants
him to pursue, or is a “no” until she
has: more liquor to relax, more coffee to wake up;
more talk about her, more feelings from him; more
slow dancing, more fast dancing.... The less she
has been drinking, the more likely he is to
experience about 150 risks of rejection between eye
contact and intercourse. And, of course, the 150
risks of rejection are more likely to be
experienced if the woman is one of the 40% who says
“no” when she means “yes.”
Robbery-by-Social-Custom: She Exists, He
Pays
To shorten the period of potential rejection,
men learn to pay for all of the 5 D’s--
Drinks, Dinner, Driving, Dating, and then, if he is
successful at repeatedly paying for the first 4
D’s, he gets to pay for the fifth: the
Diamond. Or, more precisely, a diamond with the
right 3 C’s (carrots, color and clarity).
Together, the expectation for him to pay for these
5 D’s can feel like robbery-by-social-custom:
she exists, he pays.
The only other social transaction among humans
in which the person paying is not guaranteed to
receive anything in return is that between parent
and child. Women who do not fully share the
expectation to pay are children-by-choice; they are
not women, but girls.
Few men are conscious of how the expectation to
pay pressures him to take jobs he likes less only
because they pay more; how this leads to stress,
heart attacks, and suicides that are the male
version of "my body, not my choice."
"Date Fraud"
If a man ignoring a woman's verbal "no" is
committing date rape, then a woman who says "no"
with her verbal language but "yes" with her body
language is committing date fraud.
The purpose of the fraud? To have sexual
pleasure without sexual responsibility, and
therefore without guilt or shame; to reinforce the
belief that he is getting a sexual favor while she
is giving a sexual favor, thus that he
“owes” her the 5 D’s before sex or
some measure of commitment, protection, or respect
after sex…..
[i]Nancy Gibbs, "When is
it Rape?" Time, June 3, 1991, p. 52.
[ii]US Department of
Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (hereinafter
USBJS), Criminal Victimization in the United
States: 1987, publication #NCJ115524, June, 1989,
p. 47, Table 41.
[iii]Susan Brownmiller,
Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (NY: Bantam,
1976).
[iv]US Department of
Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (hereinafter
USBJS), Criminal Victimization in the United
States: 1987, publication #NCJ115524, pp. 18-19,
Table 5.
[v]US Department of
Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (hereinafter
USBJS), Criminal Victimization in the United
States: 1987, publication #NCJ115524, p p. 18-19,
Table 5.
[vi]Charlene L.
Muehlenhard and Lisa C. Hollabaugh, "Do Women
Sometimes Say No When They Mean Yes? the Prevalence
and Correlates of Women's Token Resistance to Sex,"
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1988,
Vol. 54, No. 5, p. 874.
© 2010, Warren
Farrell (with Steven Svoboda) vs. James P.
Sterba
* * *
Man is not the enemy here, but the fellow
victim. - Betty Friedan
Warren
Farrell, Ph.D., is the author of numerous
international best-sellers on men and women,
including Why
Men Are The Way They Are
and The
Myth of Male Power.
Women
Can't Hear What Men Don't
Say was a
Book-of-the-Month Club selection and
Father
and Child Reunion has
led to Dr. Farrell doing expert witness work that
has encouraged many judges to keep dads in
children’s lives. Dr. Farrell’s released
Why
Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay
Gap and What Women Can Do About
It in 2005 and
Does
Feminism Discriminate Against
Men? A debate
in 2008.
Warren is the only man in the US
ever elected three times to the Board of Directors
of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in New
York City. He has been chosen by The Financial
Times as one of the world’s top 100
thought leaders, is in Who’s Who in America
and in Who’s Who in the World. He has taught
in five disciplines, most recently at the School of
Medicine at the University of California in San
Diego, and is ranked by the International
Biographic Centre of London as one of the
world’s top 2000 scholars of the Twentieth
Century. He has appeared on over 1,000 TV shows
worldwide and lives in Mill Valley, California with
his wife and two daughters.You can visit him at
www.warrenfarrell.com
or E-Mail
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