The mayors of Yorkshire and London have both had recent campaigns against sexual violence aimed at getting us men to call out our mates on their dodgy behaviour. Because it’s all a spectrum from opening doors for women to raping them, of course. We just have to stop our friends from sliding down the spectrum. Box ticked, campaign done.
Now I make damn sure that when I encounter dodgy men (and other men frequently recognise them better than women do), that I stay the hell away from them, and make sure they are excluded from my social circles. I’d warrant to say that most men act similarly. HP is of course correct to suggest that a more successful strategy is to find out where the dodgy gits congregate, and tackle them there.
I see a problem with the secure database of non convicted suspects, particularly if the approach would be "bring the victim statements together making a successful prosecution much more likely", because I'm afraid such an approach would be inherently prone to all sorts of statistical fallacies (texas sharpshooter, prosecutor's fallacy, etc) and so it would ultimately lead to a violation of presumption of innocence.
But the issue is very important so we should reflect on what could be done here.
I don't want to drag you into hot topics of contemporary debate, but consider the case of the nurse Lucia De Berk, who was wrongfully convicted of murdering her patients because of what turned out to be coincidences, and was later aquitted.
There is an inherent conflict of interests here: from the alleged perpetrator point of view, as liberals, in order to avoid miscarriages of justice we should set an high bar on what degree of certainty is needed before convicting; but from the point of view of the potential victims we should set a low bar of certainty before enforcing more protective measures.
So I think there is a real discussion to be had on how to make these opposite requisites cohexist, possibly enforcing early strong protective measures while avoiding the risk of wrong convictions.
I'm sorry, Helen, but these men are more 'ordinary' than you realize. I wrote about the Pelicot case a few weeks ago, just in time for having finished a great book by psychologist Dr. Timothy Buss: Bad Men: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment and Assault. The chapter on rape was particularly eye-opening and horrifying.
From my article:
"According to Bad Men, roughly one-third of men fantasize about raping a woman. One six-study summary put the number at 31%. How the studies phrase the question changes the numbers. The 30-odd-percentages come from those in which the question included the word ‘rape’; when the word is removed, and phrased as, “I fantasize about forcing a woman to have sex,” 54% admitted to it, and 62% said “it would be exciting to use force to subdue a woman.” Sexual coercion fantasies appear to be a lot more common than we know, and Buss notes that some of the men who entertain these fantasies claim they would commit rape if they believed they wouldn’t be caught or punished. That plays into the high number of rapists who commit the act while the woman is drugged or passed out from alcohol."
What is 'ordinary'? Is it every man on the street, or is it 90%? Or is it the roughly 65% who don't fantasize about raping? Okay, so this is just fantasy so it doesn't count, right? Well....
80% of rapes occur when the woman is drugged or unconscious. Sometimes men who aren't particularly prone to rape do exactly that. I used to know a woman in the States who told me a man approached her years later and said he was sorry he'd raped her at a party. She hadn't known. She had gotten drunk and went upstairs and passed out on a bed, then went home the next day. She didn't know what happened until the guy told her. He felt bad about what he did. Some women don't know they were raped until someone tells them....like Gisele Pelicot.
From the book: "Importantly, men who have these rape fantasies are also highly likely to report that they would actually commit rape if they knew that they would not be caught or punished. This is a critical finding, supporting the idea that thoughts often precede actions." And that telling women not to report because 'they won't be believed' perpetuates the ease with which a man can rape.
The 'Bad Men' book is all about the evolutionary sexual strategies men have devised to get or force women to have sex with them, and the counter-strategies women devise to ever-thwart them. The men who availed themselves of Dominique Pelicot's offer likely weren't traditional rapists; esp those repeat offenders you referenced who showed up again and again in police files; a small handful of men account for MOST of the rapes out there - and they get away with it over and over again because every woman who doesn't hold them accountable teaches them they can get away with it. And they're right.
Those are the cold, hard facts of not reporting. Rape persists because *women* allow it, not men.
As for JK Rowling's comment re raped women and 'better choices', she's right, it's dicey esp for a woman of Pelicot's generation to suggest she should have made 'better choices'. Well, Pelicot is only ten years older than I, raised in a different era when mothers and other female relatives didn't know or understand how to teach their daughters to protect themselves against male sexual appetites and abuse. Chances are very good the red warning flags were all around Dominique Pelicot and Gisele was simply too naive or uninformed to recognize them. (I wrote a whole article about a woman raped by a boyfriend who worshipped Andrew Tate). My own personal take on this is that instead of blaming these women for missing the red flags, let's educate ourselves and young women/girls on what those red flags are so they can avoid them. So much more is known now about that than when the Pelicots first got married.
We don't need to *blame* women for their rapes and abuse - but we can do our own 'post-mortems' on their events and figure out what happened and how *we* can avoid it. Sometimes the mistakes they made were avoidable, and sometimes they weren't--which indicates not a stupid woman, but a previously unidentified gap in OUR knowledge of what a determined predator can do.
I don’t know, I never looked into it much. I do know they’re common. The thing is, in fantasy you’re always in control, with a real rape you’re not. You can fantasize about some handsome lover ‘forcing’ himself on you but it’s not really rape, she really wants it, which is the premise of all those bodice-ripper novels. I don’t know how men’s rape fantasies go, whether they’d dig a lot of screaming and real fear, or whether she comes 800 times and screams til she’s hoarse from the pleasure or not.
"These rapists shared a particular prediliction for sexually offending against unconscious women and they were able to find others who shared their precise twisted fantasies and conspire to commit their crimes using social media forums." The internet enables very unusual people with very unusual interests to gather together in unusual places.
Hi Helen, I really devoured your article. A few years ago before Elon took over Twitter, I engaged in a debate about “rape culture” online. I quickly realized that men and women were interpreting the term very differently. Men were indignant and cited anti-rape/sexual assault laws to prove rape-culture didn’t exist. But women were talking more about something they’d picked up from sexist jokes and cartoons of male force that always had a bro’ yuk-yuk response, even from regular guys. And as someone has already mentioned, I know of at least one survey of college men that showed that a good 35% -ish admitted (in theory) they’d rape a girl if they had a guarantee they would get away with it. I like men a lot! Maybe too much 🤭 But I never fool myself that perhaps one out of 3 or 4 has rape fantasies. And yes, evolutionary sciences are trying to sort this out.
All valuable and consideration-worthy ideas. One concept I never see addressed (and which will most assuredly be met with derision and vitriol, but I believe is of utmost importance) is holding mothers accountable for bringing or allowing predators into their children’s lives and homes as well as for disregarding or blaming their children’s accounts of sexual abuse. In literally every case I personally know of as well as many of the cases I’ve read about, mothers either did not believe their children or blamed their children when confronted with the abuse. This is an unpleasant but very real reality for most children and mothers should be morally and legally held to account for their roles in this inexcusable reality.
The mayors of Yorkshire and London have both had recent campaigns against sexual violence aimed at getting us men to call out our mates on their dodgy behaviour. Because it’s all a spectrum from opening doors for women to raping them, of course. We just have to stop our friends from sliding down the spectrum. Box ticked, campaign done.
Now I make damn sure that when I encounter dodgy men (and other men frequently recognise them better than women do), that I stay the hell away from them, and make sure they are excluded from my social circles. I’d warrant to say that most men act similarly. HP is of course correct to suggest that a more successful strategy is to find out where the dodgy gits congregate, and tackle them there.
I see a problem with the secure database of non convicted suspects, particularly if the approach would be "bring the victim statements together making a successful prosecution much more likely", because I'm afraid such an approach would be inherently prone to all sorts of statistical fallacies (texas sharpshooter, prosecutor's fallacy, etc) and so it would ultimately lead to a violation of presumption of innocence.
But the issue is very important so we should reflect on what could be done here.
I don't want to drag you into hot topics of contemporary debate, but consider the case of the nurse Lucia De Berk, who was wrongfully convicted of murdering her patients because of what turned out to be coincidences, and was later aquitted.
There is an inherent conflict of interests here: from the alleged perpetrator point of view, as liberals, in order to avoid miscarriages of justice we should set an high bar on what degree of certainty is needed before convicting; but from the point of view of the potential victims we should set a low bar of certainty before enforcing more protective measures.
So I think there is a real discussion to be had on how to make these opposite requisites cohexist, possibly enforcing early strong protective measures while avoiding the risk of wrong convictions.
I'm sorry, Helen, but these men are more 'ordinary' than you realize. I wrote about the Pelicot case a few weeks ago, just in time for having finished a great book by psychologist Dr. Timothy Buss: Bad Men: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment and Assault. The chapter on rape was particularly eye-opening and horrifying.
From my article:
"According to Bad Men, roughly one-third of men fantasize about raping a woman. One six-study summary put the number at 31%. How the studies phrase the question changes the numbers. The 30-odd-percentages come from those in which the question included the word ‘rape’; when the word is removed, and phrased as, “I fantasize about forcing a woman to have sex,” 54% admitted to it, and 62% said “it would be exciting to use force to subdue a woman.” Sexual coercion fantasies appear to be a lot more common than we know, and Buss notes that some of the men who entertain these fantasies claim they would commit rape if they believed they wouldn’t be caught or punished. That plays into the high number of rapists who commit the act while the woman is drugged or passed out from alcohol."
What is 'ordinary'? Is it every man on the street, or is it 90%? Or is it the roughly 65% who don't fantasize about raping? Okay, so this is just fantasy so it doesn't count, right? Well....
80% of rapes occur when the woman is drugged or unconscious. Sometimes men who aren't particularly prone to rape do exactly that. I used to know a woman in the States who told me a man approached her years later and said he was sorry he'd raped her at a party. She hadn't known. She had gotten drunk and went upstairs and passed out on a bed, then went home the next day. She didn't know what happened until the guy told her. He felt bad about what he did. Some women don't know they were raped until someone tells them....like Gisele Pelicot.
From the book: "Importantly, men who have these rape fantasies are also highly likely to report that they would actually commit rape if they knew that they would not be caught or punished. This is a critical finding, supporting the idea that thoughts often precede actions." And that telling women not to report because 'they won't be believed' perpetuates the ease with which a man can rape.
The 'Bad Men' book is all about the evolutionary sexual strategies men have devised to get or force women to have sex with them, and the counter-strategies women devise to ever-thwart them. The men who availed themselves of Dominique Pelicot's offer likely weren't traditional rapists; esp those repeat offenders you referenced who showed up again and again in police files; a small handful of men account for MOST of the rapes out there - and they get away with it over and over again because every woman who doesn't hold them accountable teaches them they can get away with it. And they're right.
Those are the cold, hard facts of not reporting. Rape persists because *women* allow it, not men.
As for JK Rowling's comment re raped women and 'better choices', she's right, it's dicey esp for a woman of Pelicot's generation to suggest she should have made 'better choices'. Well, Pelicot is only ten years older than I, raised in a different era when mothers and other female relatives didn't know or understand how to teach their daughters to protect themselves against male sexual appetites and abuse. Chances are very good the red warning flags were all around Dominique Pelicot and Gisele was simply too naive or uninformed to recognize them. (I wrote a whole article about a woman raped by a boyfriend who worshipped Andrew Tate). My own personal take on this is that instead of blaming these women for missing the red flags, let's educate ourselves and young women/girls on what those red flags are so they can avoid them. So much more is known now about that than when the Pelicots first got married.
We don't need to *blame* women for their rapes and abuse - but we can do our own 'post-mortems' on their events and figure out what happened and how *we* can avoid it. Sometimes the mistakes they made were avoidable, and sometimes they weren't--which indicates not a stupid woman, but a previously unidentified gap in OUR knowledge of what a determined predator can do.
I would be very interested in knowing what the statistics show about the number of women who have rape fantasies?
I don’t know, I never looked into it much. I do know they’re common. The thing is, in fantasy you’re always in control, with a real rape you’re not. You can fantasize about some handsome lover ‘forcing’ himself on you but it’s not really rape, she really wants it, which is the premise of all those bodice-ripper novels. I don’t know how men’s rape fantasies go, whether they’d dig a lot of screaming and real fear, or whether she comes 800 times and screams til she’s hoarse from the pleasure or not.
Thank you J. K. Rowling. One must make a conscious choice to become a monster.
"These rapists shared a particular prediliction for sexually offending against unconscious women and they were able to find others who shared their precise twisted fantasies and conspire to commit their crimes using social media forums." The internet enables very unusual people with very unusual interests to gather together in unusual places.
Hi Helen, I really devoured your article. A few years ago before Elon took over Twitter, I engaged in a debate about “rape culture” online. I quickly realized that men and women were interpreting the term very differently. Men were indignant and cited anti-rape/sexual assault laws to prove rape-culture didn’t exist. But women were talking more about something they’d picked up from sexist jokes and cartoons of male force that always had a bro’ yuk-yuk response, even from regular guys. And as someone has already mentioned, I know of at least one survey of college men that showed that a good 35% -ish admitted (in theory) they’d rape a girl if they had a guarantee they would get away with it. I like men a lot! Maybe too much 🤭 But I never fool myself that perhaps one out of 3 or 4 has rape fantasies. And yes, evolutionary sciences are trying to sort this out.
All valuable and consideration-worthy ideas. One concept I never see addressed (and which will most assuredly be met with derision and vitriol, but I believe is of utmost importance) is holding mothers accountable for bringing or allowing predators into their children’s lives and homes as well as for disregarding or blaming their children’s accounts of sexual abuse. In literally every case I personally know of as well as many of the cases I’ve read about, mothers either did not believe their children or blamed their children when confronted with the abuse. This is an unpleasant but very real reality for most children and mothers should be morally and legally held to account for their roles in this inexcusable reality.