Rapists and Manly Men in the Post Roe Era
Since the Supremes overturned Roe V Wade, there have been prominent media accounts about the suffering this decision has already imposed on individual women and girls who are pregnant through no fault of their own..
From Jill Filipovic: (You should consider subscribing to her newsletter)
As abortion restrictions tick on in the US, we’re going to hear more stories about these supposedly extreme cases. Note, though, that these are only the tip of the iceberg; these are only the cases that are hitting the ears of interested journalists, and where there is enough information to corroborate the story and go to print. The overwhelming majority of the shocking, extreme, and horrifying stories will never be told. And I suspect even fewer stories will be told after this debacle — what doctor wants to have her life turned upside down by vicious right-wing attacks, and face political investigations into her practice, simply for speaking to a journalist? What parent is going to open their child up to that kind of cruelty and harassment?
What isn’t being discussed are the men responsible for these pregnancies, enabled by a legal system and culture premised on the notion of women as inferior beings that can be regarded as a form of property.
Oh, sure, the macho men on the TV news may say rapists need to be caught and prosecuted.
That’s bullshit. Rape is a crime that’s easy to get away with. Statistics on the crime vary, reflecting differences in methodology; I’m going with the numbers I saw most often.
While only 39% of sexual assaults are ever reported; one out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime (About 3% of American men – or 1 in 33 – have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.)
The rate of sexual assaults of disabled or intellectually challenged individuals runs at more than 80%, according to researchers. Only 3% of sexual abuse cases involving people with developmental disabilities are ever reported
For the rest of the population, the attacks that are reported to police are mostly unsolved. There is only a 16.3% chance the rapist will end up in prison. Factoring in unreported rapes, about 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail.
It’s only been a half century since sexual violence was mostly regarded as a crime only if it was a “street rape.” And even then the victims were subjected to further abuse if they reported the crime; all-too-often questioning by law enforcement types centered on discerning whether or not the woman deserved to get raped or enticed the attacker.
The vast majority of sexual assaults, 80 to 90%, are committed by someone the victim knows.
The most common forms of sexual abuse –incest & spousal rape– weren’t on the legal systems’ radar. Sexual violence that happened within a family was not considered rape at all.
A psychiatric textbook from the 1970s estimated that incest occurred in only about one in every million families, claiming it was often girls who initiated sex with their fathers. Fifty years ago it was still legal in every state in America for a husband to rape his wife.
Police departments around the country deemed rape kits collected as evidence not worthy of follow up. They were considered a waste of time and a drain on the budget.
A New York Times account about Marty Goddard, the Chicago woman who invented the rape kit, gives insight into just how little effort goes into catching the perpetrators of sexual assault.
…sexual-assault forensics began as a system for men to decide what they felt about the victim — whether she deserved to be considered a “victim” at all. It had little to do with identifying a perpetrator or establishing what had actually happened.
Even in the 1970s, the forensic examination remained a formality, a kind of kabuki theater of scientific justice. The police officers wielded absolute power in the situation; they told the story; they assigned blame. And they didn’t want to give up that power.
A nationwide movement to change this has resulted in people wrongfully accused of rape being released from jail and serial offenders being prosecuted.
There are nine states in the U.S. where it is currently legal for a 10 year old to get married (most often to an adult man). 10 year olds can get fiancée visas to come to this country to marry.
A recent Senate report found that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) approved immigration petitions for 8,686 spouses and fiancée in marriages involving children from FY2007 to FY2017.
In 95% of the cases, the younger person was a girl.
Pregnancy is the #1 killer of girls aged 15-19 worldwide. Many of those girls die in childbirth; many die because they live in countries where they do not have access to safe and legal abortions.
As abortion restrictions tick on in the US, we’re going to hear more stories about these supposedly extreme cases. Note, though, that these are only the tip of the iceberg; these are only the cases that are hitting the ears of interested journalists, and where there is enough information to corroborate the story and go to print. The overwhelming majority of the shocking, extreme, and horrifying stories will never be told. And I suspect even fewer stories will be told after this debacle — what doctor wants to have her life turned upside down by vicious right-wing attacks, and face political investigations into her practice, simply for speaking to a journalist? What parent is going to open their child up to that kind of cruelty and harassment?
Alright, now that I’ve laid down a case for just how bad the situation is, let’s talk about the perpetrators.
In instances of incest, an inclination toward repeating the crime is passed from generation to generation. From Why do people sexually use or abuse children?, at 1in6.org:
Most adults who sexually use or abuse children were, during their own childhoods, abused sexually, physically, and/or emotionally, as well as neglected physically and/or emotionally. In reaction to those experiences of abuse, neglect, betrayal and powerlessness, they may have attempted to find feelings of power and control over others – including sexual power over children.
There are other reasons, which is why we see people like Michael Jackson in the news:
Some people who sexually use or abuse children have high social status in a group – a star athlete, a musician, a boss or manager, a prominent member of a community, even an especially popular person – and become so confused (and “intoxicated”) by constant admiration or praise that they begin to think the rules are different for them.
The social status appellation applies to a swath of Christian church leaders, and it occurs to me that the more their theology is about preserving patriarchy, the more likely they are to engage sexual assaults.
The Catholic Church has faced a decades long reckoning with this sort of criminal activity. It cost that church millions of dollars in restitution, and there are court cases still in the works. What we haven’t seen are a comparable number of priests and laity being prosecuted.
Nearly 400 Southern Baptist leaders, from youth pastors to top ministers, have pleaded guilty or been convicted of sex crimes against more than 700 victims since 1998.
Superstar evangelical pastors like Bill Hybels and Andy Savage have been forced to resign over allegations of misconduct. The New York Times published an expose on the “sexual abuse crisis” at Evangelical churches.
The high and mighty in the Republican Party brought forth their supposed feelings about sexual assault during the Senate confirmation hearings for judge Ketanji Brown Jackson back in March.
Via Slate:
Republican Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz attempted to smear the nominee by inaccurately claiming that she had a record of handing out unusually light sentences in cases where defendants were accused of viewing child pornography.
The issue descended deeper into absurdity after three moderate Republicans voted to confirm Jackson this week and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene—the walking id of MAGA-America—tweeted about them, saying “Murkowski, Collins, and Romney are pro-pedophile.”
I’m not saying sexual assault or pedophilia is a partisan problem; what I am saying is that the politicians who are making the most noise about those topics have a remarkable record for hypocrisy.
These are the people saying a 10 year old victim of rape should be forced to carry the child of her attacker to term. These are the people making all the noise about LGBTQ humans “grooming” children. And these are the very same people who oppose every effort to dismantle the oppressive institutions of the patriarchy.
You may as well call them the Grand Old Perverts.
Of course, the Republican Party isn’t the sole purveyor of a culture deeming sexual violence acceptable. It’s a society-wide problem, one that’s come to be associated with the term “toxic masculinity.”
That particular term drives the nutcases like Tucker Carlson at Fox News crazy. He’s convinced that if men just “man up” that many of society’s problems will go away. Carlson even went so far as to discuss how men who tan their testicles experience the righteousness of true manhood.
Toxic masculinity is so ingrained in society that most people experience its effects at some point. Ultimately it's a mental health issue, of the sort that Americans like to stick their heads in the sand about.
First and foremost, this ideology tends to treat cisgender women as sexual conquests, contributing to ongoing issues, like rape culture. This is where the tendency to remove blame from sexual assailants and place it on the victim originates.
Toxic masculinity also teaches men that aggression and violence are key to solving many problems — unless you want to appear weak. The resulting violence, which can show up in many forms, including intimate partner violence and gun violence, can have far-reaching effects on those who aren’t even directly involved.
For young people in particular, those who don’t fit inside that predetermined box of what it means to be masculine may find themselves ostracized because of it. Politicians like Florida Governor DeSantis are doing their best to force young males back into that box.
The right-wing Moms for Liberty, the group fighting for conservative priorities in local schools, held its first national gathering in Tampa this weekend, where they planned efforts to “elect their own candidates to school boards, pass state legislation and diminish the influence of teachers unions.” Their targets include social emotional learning and school mental health programs.
Here’s an important excerpt from Robert Jenson’s The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men.
From the research available and my own experience, here is the pattern I see, and have experienced: Men generally are trained through a variety of cultural institutions to view sex as the acquisition of pleasure by the taking of women. Sex is a sphere in which men are trained to see themselves as naturally dominant. Throughout the culture, women are objectified and women’s sexuality is commodified. Sexual interactions are most sexy when men are dominant and women are subordinate; power is eroticized. Boys and men are told all this is natural, just the way things are — and always have been — between men and women.
In a culture in which sex is often portrayed — especially in porn — as the taking of pleasure from women, rape is an expression of the sexual norms of the culture, not a violation of those norms. Rape is both nominally illegal and completely normal at the same time, which is why many men often do not view their own sexually aggressive or violent behavior as aggression or violence — to them, it’s just sex. That’s why some men who commit rape often also condemn rape, which they see as something other men do.
Rape is about the fusion of sex and domination, about the eroticization of control. When we are stuck in “an endless debate over whether rape is about sexual gratification on the one hand, or a display of power and dominance on the other; sex accomplished violently, or violence accomplished sexually,” as one writer puts it, we obscure the uncomfortable reality that in our world today the two are intertwined, not just in rape but in much of ‘normal’ sexual activity. Yes, men who rape seek a sense of power, but men also use their power to get sex from women, sometimes under conditions that are not legally defined as rape but involve varying levels of control and coercion.
The power over others aspect makes itself evident in the higher rates of sexual violence against minorities, homeless humans, and disabled people.
The Governor of Texas, attempting to justify the state’s strict new prohibitions against abortion, told the media that:
“Rape is a crime, and Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets.”.
The numbers say Abbott's promise was empty. In fact, according to NBC News, Texas is below the national average in arrests for reported rapes with just a 13.4% “pass” rate. In 2020 Texas had the most reported rapes in the US.
There are underlying issues enabling sexual violence, including a portion of the population in denial. Research suggests that family violence is two to four times higher in the law-enforcement community than in the general population. (And these are the people we’re being asked to call when sexual violence occurs?)
Aside from judgements (good, bad or illegal) about gender based behaviors, it’s important to understand that shifts in the economy (we’re no longer an agricultural economy, which encouraged large families) and mindsets (the information era, good and bad) have a role in our understanding of what’s acceptable conduct.
The three martini lunch and grabbing the waitress by the ass might have been passed off as ‘boys being boys’ a couple of generations back. Times have changed, and the more ‘normal’ of us men have adapted to some degree. To be sure, much of this change has been superficial, as you’ll see when some all-male groups socialize.
Addressing the problem of toxic masculinity doesn’t have any simplistic solutions. Doing so requires societal shifts around several things, including gender stereotypes and the stigma surrounding mental health. And it’s clear we’re not there yet.
Above all, setting aside toxic masculinity as a male-identifying person involves being true to yourself, not some false idea of the person you should be. Finding your true self is a process that takes time.
A therapist can help with this process and help alter unhelpful thinking patterns, if you can afford it. Unfortunately, many health insurance plans create barriers or just won’t cover therapy. And if you don't have health insurance, or have one of those ‘in case of emergency plans’ legalized during the Trump era, you’ll need cold, hard cash.
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Think San Diego is safe? Think again.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com