A note on discussions of rape

[kaberett]

Content note for discussion of rape.

I am increasingly convinced that "rape isn't about sex, it's about power" is actively enormously harmful in addition to being wrong. Failure to acquire consent through thoughtlessness or indifference or complacency is no less failure to determine consent; if we tell people that rape is always about power then we do an enormous disservice to people whose rapists were actually only interested in sex and assumed, for whatever reason, that it would be fine.

I don't think this is particularly new or original, but it is a thing I wanted to write down somewhere having articulated it.

Comments

[flippac]

Yep. Something I emphatically agree on.

[quartzpebble]

I partly agree. I think that "rape isn't about sex" is a sometimes-harmful oversimplification, but I think that the main thing that differentiates rape from bad or traumatic sex is the presence of some sort of fucked-up power stuff, whether or not anyone realizes it or acknowledges it.

If complacency or indifference, they think that prioritizing getting what they want over finding out what the other person wants is fundamentally ok and that they probably have the power to act on that, or they wouldn't do it.

[thatyourefuse]

... now you make me think about it, do most people actually assume that there's some lovely normal real kind of sex that isn't about power?

[silveradept]

It does seem, though, that a rapist is exercising some form of power over their victim to get what they want. It's not necessarily physical power, though, and that's the part that gets overlooked.

[steorra]

I think there's a difference between power for the sake of power (which I think the phrase implies) and power for the sake of sex.

[silveradept]

If that's what they're going for, then definitely, yes, there's a difference. I wouldn't expect every assault to be about someone getting off on the power they hold over someone else. It does seem like the phrase, without those implications, is correct, but a lot of bad arguments happen when people insist that their way is the only valid way of looking at it.

I wonder if it could be reformatted to remain catchy, but stay accurate, like "Rapists will use whatever power they have to get sex."

[flippac]

The phrase was coined with that implication in mind, based on old results that I suspect were about specifically convicted rapists.

[steorra]

I'd never been quite comfortable with that slogan as a general statement but I don't think I'd thought through why. Your reasoning makes sense.

[sfred]

I agree. Thank you for saying so.

[silverhare]

*wry smile* If it isn't about sex, why am I likely to hyperventilate before any and every sexual encounter? For the past decade?

(In other words, yes I completely and totally agree.)

[forthwritten]

I think it's more complicated than just sex or just power. Sometimes thoughtlessness or indifference or complacency themselves can be a form of (expression of?) power - the sort of unexamined worldview that has never had to think that other people may have different needs and desire or may want different things. Certainly my experience was that the other person decided that his pleasure trumped my wish not to be in pain. I don't think he was getting off on the assault part so much as he just decided that his desires were more important than mine.

I think not having - or not choosing - to be aware of very basic theory of mind is tied up with power. There's something breathtakingly arrogant about making those kind of assumptions about sex and feeling that everyone else aligns with you or that no one else matters but you.

[quartzpebble]

Yes. Precisely.

[pretty_panther]

Agreed. I think this fails people who are victims of domestic rape a lot. Many perpetrators seem to think that because they normally get sex that they can ignore the word 'no' and take it anyway. That is not about power, it is about wanting sex.

[quartzpebble]

Except even then, sometimes it's about power to get their needs met (emotional, in my ex's case) more than the sex as such (which wasn't very good [beyond the lack of consent, that is]). Anecdata, but still.

[marnanel]

Thank you for saying this-- I'd been trying to get what seemed wrong about the phrase straight in my head for a while. One particular sticking point is that for abusive people it's impossible to draw a line between their perceptions of sex and power anyway.

[davidgillon]

I keep thinking about the Assange case, particularly the victim who says she woke up with Assange penetrating her. I think a lot of people wouldn't recognise that as being about power, because she wasn't conscious to have power exercised over her. And that's where 'it's about power' falls down. Because that was someone in a position of power deciding consent was irrelevant, but a lot of people won't recognise the exercise of power that's occurring. And a message that's accurate, but not understood by many of the people it's directed at, is as damaging as a message that's just plain wrong.

[vass]

[belated response is belated]

It's kind of like saying "murder isn't about death, it's about power." I mean, I get why it's (still, dammit) important to try to decouple rape from consensual sex. But the phrasing "rape isn't about sex, it's about power" is kind of... a frame that obscures certain things and doesn't necessarily make others clearer.