This is probably one of the pro-rape ideas that annoys me the most, because the thing is? We teach people not to do stuff all the time.
We teach people not to steal, not to hit, not to kill, not to do a lot of things. And we do that because behaving ethically benefits everybody–for why things just don’t work if people don’t have some code of ethics to follow, may I recommend the Adventure Time episode “City of Thieves”? And we also teach people what unethical things are because we’re not born knowing what ethics even are.
As soon as kids are old enough to take things, we teach them not to steal. And nobody thinks it’s because kids are amoral little monsters, it’s because they don’t know what it is. Kids don’t have a firm grasp of the difference between “Mine” and “Someone else’s.” To a three-year-old, everything is Mine. So parents say, “No, that isn’t yours, that’s someone else’s, and you need to give it back because it doesn’t belong to you, and when you take things that aren’t yours it makes people sad.” Then those kids grow up to be the kind of adults who don’t steal, and we forget that someone had to teach us this simple concept.
Literally an hour ago, I went to the gas station to get some cash and a little girl tried to walk out the door with a candy bar that her mom hadn’t paid for. Her mom had to pull her back and say, with words, “You can’t take that, we haven’t paid for it.” Because this 4-year-old child didn’t understand what stealing was yet, so her mom had to explain to her.
When you think about it, stealing is actually a pretty complex topic. Is it stealing if I ask my mom for money, but I take a few dollars more than she says I can have? Is it stealing if I eat my best friend’s food without asking? What if I take something I’m pretty sure he would be okay with me having if I asked? Hell, there was a complex but well-known differentiation between stealing and “commandeering” when I was in the Army–one of my sergeants told me when he was in Germany, his squad was in a panic because there was an inventory and people had taken home tools from work and had to find them quickly. Taking a scope was wrong but taken a reel of 550 cord was okay, even though in both cases I was costing the Army money.
So this idea that we shouldn’t teach men not to rape, because “everyone knows” not to rape… well, it makes no sense.
To start, not everyone knows what rape even is. Most people think of rape as a violent act committed by a stranger, yet so many people will cheerfully say that they convinced an unwilling partner to have sex with them. Pick-up artists are well-known for touting sex tips that are basically just rape. For a depressing look at the nitty-gritty of pick-up, I heavily recommend “Confessions of a Pick Up Artist Chaser” by Clarisse Thorn. Tips include ways to overcome “last minute resistance” (by trapping someone so they can’t escape and therefore can’t say no).
Is it rape if you beg and plead until your partner stops resisting? Is it rape if you bought someone an expensive gift, or it’s been a long time, or they “owe” you? Is it rape if you’re really really horny? Is it rape if it’s your spouse? The answer to all of these questions should be OF COURSE IT’S RAPE but a surprising number of people will say that even though one partner didn’t want to have sex, it isn’t rape because… reasons.
So if people don’t even know what rape is, how can they know not to rape?
Every time I see a post that assumes that teaching men not to rape means that all men are amoral monsters, what I hear is “If you teach people who rape actually is, I’m afraid that I’ll have to admit that there were times I had sex that might have been rape, but that can’t be true because I’m a good person. So you can’t teach people not to rape.”
Or, even worse, “I, personally, have raped somebody and I want to be able to keep doing it.”
Is that the world you want to make?
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