Spoonwood

Hi Erin,

I read in your This Way to the Revolution that you had trouble setting up a domestic violence shelter for men, in part, because men didn't seem to want to self-organize like women did, and that things would have gone better if you had a group of women to help men take care of themselves. What sorts of steps do you think need to be taken for successful domestic violence shelters for men? How do you think they can effectively get organized?

Warren Farrell is an author who has written several books on men and boy's issues since the 80s. He was a member of the board of N.O.W. for three years in the 70s. In his book The Myth of Male Power, he has a passage which the protestors at the U of T took out of context... when he was NOT going to talk about that subject at all. There's a previous reddit on this topic: http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/13e97m/warren_farrell_quotes_what_is_their_context I'll also say here that the passage of Gone with the Wind, as I understand, gets interpreted by some as rape, and others not as rape. That said, I think everyone half-sane that Scarlett O'Hara at least got physically assaulted directly before sex, since she gets dragged kicking and screaming. Also, even if you blacken that part of the Myth of Male Power, I found much to recommend in it.

No, that author is actually NOT well-read. There exists a consistent conflation between distinct forms of sexual violence and rape in that comment. Also, rape culture normalizes rape. None of the examples cited indicates how rape gets normalized.

What are you on about? Why have you elided the distinction between rape and other forms of sexual violence?

Instead, it refers to the mixed messages that get expressed with regard to sexual assault, harassment, and consent.

No. Rape culture refers to a culture that normalizes rape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_culture Rape is distinct from sexual assault, harassment, and consent.

Despite a strong intolerance for rape, the notion of active consent is rarely an active discussion topic; in books about how to teach your children about sex, teaching them about the importance of consent is often not a strong priority.

Not having such doesn't normalize rape.

Strong cultural norms regarding relationships and sex teach women to play "hard to get" (i.e., say "no" when they mean "yes"), and teach men to ignore initial negative responses to persuade women to say "yes". As a source, watch virtually any romance movie ever.

That doesn't normalize rape.

Despite the fact that most sexual assaults are committed by someone the victim knows, rape is often portrayed in a "stranger-in-the-bushes" kind of way. This allows individuals who violate consent to consider themselves "not rapists", because they are not specifically targeting strangers.

That also doesn't normalize rape. Rape can only get normalized if it can get viewed as a good thing.

It's about a culture that says it abhors it, while failing to change social norms and institutions that actually help to cultivate sexual assault.

No, you can't use something concerning sexual assault to make an inference about "rape culture", since plenty of sexual assaults are not rapes.

Yes, such studies exist which find an under-reporting of rape, but they don't generally find less than 10%. Where does the less than 10% figure come from?

The Ohio University Women's Center says "60% of rapes/sexual assaults are not reported to the police, according to a statistical average of the past 5 years." which they get from RAINN.

The (U. S.) National Institute of Justice in 2010 found that 36% of rapes got reported: http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/rape-sexual-violence/Pages/rape-notification.aspx

"In 2001, only 39% of rapes and sexual assaults were reported to law enforcement officials — about one in every three. (2002 NCVS)" http://sarsonline.org/resources-stats/reports-laws-statics

The difference between under-reporting of rape and that of other crimes, though it does seem to exist, doesn't seem enormous: "On average, an estimated 211,200 rapes and sexual assaults went unreported to police each year between 2006 and 2010. Although serious violent crime was generally less likely to go unreported to the police than simple assault, a higher percentage of rape or sexual assault (65 percent) than simple assault (56 percent) victimizations went unreported over the five-year period." http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/vnrp0610pr.cfm

"From 2000 to 2005, 59% of rapes were not reported to law enforcement.[270][271]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics

I haven't a clue how they come up with these figures, especially since the definition of rape varies from state to state, but I haven't a clue where the "under 10% of rapes get reported" to the police figure comes from. It seems woefully inconsistent with other studies, if it even exists.