Explaining Rape Culture to a Man on My Birthday

I heard everything and understood everything you said in the car, which included many clear statements that differ from what you are saying here now. (Including your angry disagreement with my statement that a woman is never responsible for her own rape). I heard you.

But you are not hearing me.

Fully 80% of women are sexually harassed or otherwise violated by men before they are 18. Ask the women you know. Every woman I know has been assaulted in some way. She was raped by a man that she trusted,. She had a man reach between her legs to touch her labia on a bus. She had a man coerce and manipulate her into having sex using the threat of abandonment. She awaoke at a party to find a man trying to fuck her. Every single woman has stories like that, and worse.

So when men choose to rape and stalk a woman, or abuse a woman in any way, there is an 80% chance they are going to be attacking a woman who was victimized whe she was younger. To turn around then and argue that somehow her previous victimization in any way shape or form determined the man’s choice to assault her yet again is victim blaming. If virtually every woman has been victimized in the past, how in the world can that past victimization be used to explain future victimization? Better yet argue that having brown hair caused her assault. It is an illusory correlation you mention.

The women who avoid rape and harassment are not stronger, or more pure, or smarter. They are just fucking lucky.

Your type of thinking is a handy excuse our culture uses to locate the cause of a heinous crime inside the victim of said crime. It makes us all feel better to think that such women attract attackers because of some weakness caused by their past victimhood. Then women can feel safe because they can convince themselves they are too strong and smart to be attacked, and men can feel good because they know it is not their fault.

Then women can spend decades in therapy and at “spiritual retreats” trying to understand the role they played in attracting such abuse, and our society can spend its energy trying to teach women to avoid such abuse with tricks like “never leave you drink unattended at the bar!!"

And this all serves as a diversion technique. It makes my mom spend an hour defending and explaining why you had the views you do, it makes ME spend hours feeling violated and disgusted all over again, typing this email and explaining myself, and it makes our entire culture ignore the one undeniable truth underlying all of this: Men violate and stalk, and rape, and abuse women all the time.

Men do it. Because they want to. Because they can.

So spend some time thinking about THAT. Spend some time explaining why men rape and stalk and violate Based not on qualities of the victim, but on qualities of the man.

If you really want to support women and be an ally, work to stop men from raping them, and find explanations for why men feel that women are their property, that our bodies are theirs to use and enjoy how they choose without consequence, moral or otherwise (hint: it’s a little thing called systematic misogyny).

And don’t waste one more second of my time, or any other woman’s time, trying to "mansplain” to them about why and how sexual assault happens. We know how it happens. It happens because of men.

If you legitimately would like to learn more, and help change this fucked up society we live in, here is a place to get started: rapeculturerealities.

And if you read it, do not try to find holes in the logic, further explain your own points, or look for exceptions to the rule. Instead, try to be open to accepting the truth of what you read. That is heart of true listening.