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SEX, LIES AND FEMINISM |
4 Pages - Page 4 |
Brownmiller ("Against Our Will" New York:Simon & Schuster, 1980) contains a very radical, misandrist (man-hating) theory of rape, but it has been fairly influential: "...Man's structural capacity to rape and woman's corresponding structural vulnerability are as basic to the physiology of both our sexes as the primal act of sex itself.... Anatomically, one might want to improve on the design of nature, but such speculation appears to my mind as unrealistic.... In the violent landscape inhabited by primitive woman and man,... rape became not only a male prerogative, but man's basic weapon of force against woman, the principal agent of his will and her fear.... It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear" (Brownmiller 1980, 232-233).
The above passage starts off quite reasonably and uncontroversially. But where does Brownmiller find the evidence that primitive woman and man inhabited a "violent landscape" ? Granted, the males may have been hunters, and they may all have had to go in fear of being hunted by other animals themselves - but was primitive human society necessarily more violent then contemporary society ?
And where is the evidence that rape was man's "basic weapon of force against woman" ? How do we know how much (if any) force was used by early man against early woman ? Why would rape have been necessarily more common than beatings ? If women were at least as eager for sexual intercourse as men, then it is hard to see how any rape could have occurred. If, on the other hand, men were (or are) more keen on sexual intercourse than women, then that provides a motivation for rape which has nothing to do with violence.
I think that, after all these highly speculative assertions, Brownmiller's claim that all men consciously keep all women in fear of rape is a straightforward lie. I know that it is false, because it is not true of myself, and I doubt that I am unique. When I have thought of rape at all - it is not a subject I think about very often - it never crossed my mind to think of the effect on women of the hypothetical possibility that I might rape someone. I only thought of it in terms of how I would feel about it. Whether all women are afraid of being raped is another matter - but again, I doubt that that is true, either.
Nevertheless, Brownmiller has a point, hidden amongst all that exaggeration. It is certainly plausible to suggest that the possibility that almost any man could rape almost any woman colours the power relationship between the sexes. Equally, however, one could say that the fact that any woman could cry "rape" after any instance of love-making also colours the power relationship between the sexes. |
Women are usually comparatively passive in sexual relationships in general, and in sexual intercourse in particular. So the male always runs the risk that a woman who usually means "yes" when she says "no" (and this is fairly common, in my experience) might claim afterwards that she had actually meant "no". This is especially the case in societies where it is even possible for a husband to get charged with raping his own wife.
Rape has to be seen in the context of dating, foreplay, and intercourse customs, pressures and practices. Brownmiller talks of "man's structural capacity to rape and woman's corresponding structural vulnerability". The other side of the coin is woman's structural capacity to be passive and ambiguous, and man's corresponding structural vulnerability to rejection, on the one hand, and to false claims of rape, on the other.
The contrast between a penis and testicles, on the one hand, and a vagina and labia, on the other, is a difference that is certainly not irrelevant to the issue of legal equality. Having a vagina makes a woman liable to become a victim, but not a perpetrator of rape - on the other hand, having a penis makes a man liable to become a victim of false sex-crime allegations - but not a perpetrator of such allegations (except in the relatively rare scenario of homosexual rape).
Feminists pooh-pooh the idea that any men ever experience such strong urges that they literally cannot control them. I don't know how they could possibly know this for a fact. Maybe all this means is that women never have such feelings. Certainly a legal system should never require that a man have to cease intercourse, once started. A woman does not thave the right to expect that a man can control himself to the extent that she can tell him to stop once he has actually started the sex-act itself !
The medical reference work Rosenfeld ( "Symptoms," New York: Bantam 1990) contains the following passage: "Another cause of testicular pain is unrequited love and unfulfilled passion. The resulting congestion of the scrotal tissues causes pain. The condition, known among its sufferers as 'blue balls', is easily remediable - but not by a doctor !" | |  |
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| I don't think that women are capable of suffering analogous pain from unrequited love, but I can't state that categorically. Anyway, in societies where masturbation is frowned upon, it is obvious that a man could indeed find himself in the situation of needing to rape a woman because of a real, pressing physical need to relieve pain. This does not make the rape necessarily excusable (morally or legally), but it does place men in a different situation from any that women ever have to face. |
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