General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Stop Telling Women How to Not Get Raped [View all]Tansy_Gold
(17,930 posts)and backed them up.
I have never said I hated men, nor have I said women are all innocent. I have never said all men are rapists, or that all men want to be rapists.
I have merely stated that all men are POTENTIAL rapists, and given that most rapists don't consider what they have done to be rape, I think my statement is pretty accurate.
Most people still think of rape as the dark alley stranger kind of forcible rape, but it's not. At the high end, 25% of rapes are stranger rapes, and very few happen outdoors. Much more often, nonconsensual sex is perpetrated by a husband, boyfriend, exboyfriend, family member, etc. We tend, as a society, not to think of our fathers, brothers, spouses, etc. as rapists, and it's very difficult for a lot of people, men as well as women, to wrap their heads around the concept.
It's not man-hating. It's awareness of the situation. I'm not shrieking, I'm not screaming. I'm using a few capitalized words to make some emphasis, but I'm not yelling.
I've spent a lot of time explaining myself and where my viewpoints and facts come from. I've never said women have no responsibility for their actions. I've never denied that women can be false rape accusers, and I've leveled the "accusation" that all women are potential false accusers.
But when ANY man, whether he's gay, straight, bi, or non, says he couldn't possibly be a rapist, I remain skeptical. Doth he protest too much? I don't know. But I've known enough men who would never consider themselves or be considered by anyone else to be "real" rapists, and who have still engaged in sexual activity that meets the definition of rape.
The incidence of false accusation is actually quite rare, though occasionally it gets huge publicity. And that publicity serves to depress real rape reporting. Far more common is incidence of non-reported real rape, because all too often, neither the rapist nor the victim even knows it's rape.