Womanly Virtues Wednesday: Another Anti-rape campaign that isn't about rape

Courtesy of The Fourth Checkraise, I learned about a new "anti-rape" campaign. Here is a sample poster:

"Men can stop rape" can we. By doing what I wonder? Beating up rapists perhaps? Guarding women every second of the day and night? Stupid question because the assumption behind this campaign is that every man is a rapist and we need to be "educated" so we'll stop being rapists. It's probably pointless to explain why this campaign will have no effect because it was never intended to have any effect. Just do a  thought experiment and imagine how a real rapist such as a Russell Williams or Paul Bernardo would respond to such a poster. (Notice by the way, that in the poster above the man's eyes are held captive by our gaze and that the woman is free: the visual message is that their relative power status vis-à-vis the viewer is exactly the opposite of what the written message tells us. Any time you see that in a poster you can be sure the motives behind it are dishonest.)

As others have pointed out before me, we don't treat any other crime like this. No one thinks that a campaign explaining property rights would deter burglars and no one thinks that a campaign promoting the dignity of human life would stop murderers. 

No, the real point of this campaign is to paint men as a problem. No one behind this campaign spent even a moment contemplating the available research on the psychology of real rapists. Worse, it doesn't seem to have crossed their minds that branding all men as potential rapists is an act of hatred. The only appropriate response to "What part of 'no' do you not understand?' is and always will be "What part of 'F___ Off!' do you not understand?"

But, that said, there is a real issue hiding here and it's worth discussing.

Note that the poster shows us a couple. This isn't about some guy following a woman down a dark street  and it isn't even about date rape. It's about how men in relationships should treat women.

So let's consider a couple. I'll call them Jason and Paula. They meet at university. They don't know anything about one another's sexual histories so we we won't either. They get along well and pretty soon they are on their way to being a couple. And they kiss. Then they do more than kiss but, at some point, she stops him.

They go on.

At some later time, they kiss and do more than kiss and again, at some point she stops him.

They go on.

This happens enough that the question of why Paula won't go any further becomes unavoidable. Maybe Jason asks or maybe he doesn't but Paula feels it is incumbent on her to explain. She says, "I'm not ready."

They go on.

Jason steels himself up to ask a question. "I don't want to put any pressure on you, but could you explain to me where you are and why you feel you're not ready.'

And she says, "I don't know."

As Jason knew, the question Paula answers is not what he asked her but rather: "When are you going to be ready?" That's why he told her doesn't want to pressure on her. Because he is putting pressure on her and he wants to be as decent as he can about it.

The key thing is that they aren't talking about sex. If they could talk about sex, their lives would be simple. Jason's question was not about sex but about their future as a couple. That is where it gets tricky. Jason knows that it would be wrong to issue an ultimatum to the effect of "put out or I leave". Being a decent guy, he is making sure he doesn't do such a thing even by accident.

I'd go further and say that for Jason there are only two right choices and host of bad choices. He can either

1. suck it up and stick with Paula and allow her to either get used to the idea of sex or not or
2. he can leave and take all the blame on himself.

You may or may not like those rules. But the thing is that they are rules. Like all rules they have an arbitrary quality about them. No set of rules will ever match up exactly with a satisfying morality. If the sign says "yield" then I yield to the other driver whether or not she is behaving reasonably.

But rules are what we miss. That is what this campaign is really about. "So when I wasn't sure how she felt, I asked". There is an implied rule here: If you aren't sure, ask. It's a good rule as far as it goes but it needs context: How do you know not to be sure? There is a whole lot of back-story missing from the example. The woman has to have been sending the guy some mixed messages and that is what led him to wonder, "How does she really feel?"

With the sexual revolution we threw away the rules and a lot of women have discovered that rules are good for them and they want new rules. But if we are to have rules they can't be rules that pull all the responsibility on one side. And that is what these rules do. They place no onus whatsoever on women to communicate clearly. The people behind these campaigns want rules for men and lots of them but they don't want rules for women.

Take Paula's answer above. Is "I don't know," a good enough answer? No it isn't. It might be true. She may be saying "I don't know," because she really doesn't know. It might also be a lie. She may know full well that she isn't going to be ready for sex any time soon and is saying this because she doesn't want Jason to leave. But it's a bad answer not because it is or isn't true but because it isn't enough. There is another human being involved and she owes him more. She needs to sit down and think is it fair to string this guy along like this. She knows full well what his expectations and hopes for the relationship are and she should end it and take the blame if she knows they aren't on the same page about this.

Under the old rules, men were expected to be gentlemen. We've quite rightly thrown away the rules that used to govern women but this campaign tells us that still makes sense to expect men to be gentlemen: "My strength is not for hurting". But that will only work if women have a code of honour too.