No Means No in Any Language

Peter Paul Rubens 'The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus' ca.1617

Whilst busy preparing a piece on current affairs I stumbled upon this and thought you might find it interesting: One in three Britons believe a woman who flirts is partly or totally responsible if she is raped, a "shocking" opinion poll in Brirtain showed today.

Between a third and a quarter of respondents also put part or all of the blame on the woman if she fails to say "no" clearly to the man, wears sexy clothes, drinks too much, has many sexual partners and walks alone in a deserted area.

CNN has a quick pole on the side of the article where you simply press a button to vote and those results are even more astounding :

YES   45%  1507  ( NOV 23RD UPDATE)
NO     55%  1817  ( NOV 23RD UPDATE)

Is it just me that finds this outrageous? No apparently not. My friend and fellow blogger Kenny Pierce has quite a lot to say on the subject. As usual he has pearls of wisdom from a male perspective, and we've decided to co-blog the issue, so listen up:

This story caught our attention. It is troubling to both of us...and yet, in hindsight, perhaps we should not be surprised.

When a woman is raped, how much of it is her fault? Our answer is immediate: none.

It seems an easy answer. And we'll also add something else, too. How much of it is the fault of the rapist's sexist-joke-telling, beer-drinking, woman objectifying buddies? Our answer is just as immediate, and derives from the same logic: none.

Furthermore, we think flirting is a highly pleasant and innocent pastime, and we would like for our respective daughters to be able to indulge in the harmless varieties. However it's a very great pity indeed that modern Western culture produces sizable quantities of young men who think that to flirt is to ante up.

How did we get here? The young men of our father's generation would not have been nearly so likely to say that flirting was a rapable offense as were the young men of our college generation. It is troubling to both of us that so many modern-day Brits are willing to blame rape victims for their own rapes...

So what happened?

Flirty is a word whose meaning gets more elastic the more a society is male-dominated. In Pakistan, for example, just in 2002, more than forty women are known to have had acid thrown in their faces; for the express purpose of causing horrific, permanent disfigurement. The well-documented acid incidents, usually follow one of two basic story lines. In one, an extremist Muslim group such as the Taliban tries to terrorize all women who go unveiled, as part of their overall repressive regime. But in the other, a particular woman goes innocently unveiled; a male acquaintance sees her and desires her and attempts to seduce her; she spurns his advances and he considers himself bitterly wronged and wreaks justice upon her. To such a man, a woman who simply goes without a veil is the equivalent to a harlot in our culture. (And, sickeningly often, the punishment handed out to the man by the village elders is obscenely mild, or indeed the victim may face intense social pressure to demand no punishment at all from her attacker.)

The more insistent a culture is that there are no innate differences between men and women (generally speaking, of course), and the less a society explains to men and boys how women and girls think differently about sex than the guys do, the more likely it is that innocent female behavior will be wrongly misinterpreted by males as deliberately sexually provocative behavior, and thus the more likely men are to feel aggrieved and cheated when the girl who has been wishing it, declines to 'follow through'. This is, clearly, a mark against extreme American-style 'feminism-as-androgyny.'

But the more insistent a culture is that men have the right to dominate and to be gratified by their women, and that women are responsible to ensure (by restricting their own freedom) that men are never tempted, the more likely it is that innocent female behavior will be treated by men as deliberately sexually provocative behavior that gives male beholders the right to claim the promised gratification. And this is, clearly, a plea for one heckuva lot more feminism in places like Pakistan.

We could sum up our whole point in this post as, 'Don't confuse condition with cause, and remember that men and women are different but equal'.

You see, to create by foolishness a condition conducive to rape, is a very different thing than to commit a rape. We would like to see a young lady in college not drinking herself to the point where she loses all common sense, and those of us who have not totally abandoned traditional Judeo-Christian sexual ethics would like to see her behave in, to put it bluntly, a considerably more moral fashion than is common at frat parties. We would also like to see the boys being aware of the potential consequences inherent in the atmosphere they are creating, and we would like to see the boys behaving morally just as much as the girls. But a rapist is in a completely different category.

So, let's say the British pollsters ask us, "Is the woman partly or entirely to blame if she fails to say 'no' clearly to the man, wears sexy clothes, drinks too much, has many sexual partners and walks alone in a deserted area?" Our answer – because we know the difference between condition and cause -- will be, "To blame for what? Do you mean, to blame for getting raped? Absolutely not. Do you mean to ask whether her rapist's blame is diminished, and some of that blame is transferred to the woman? To say so would be despicable.”

What these poll results seem to hint at, and what our own experience with collegiate males in particular tells us, is that there are a significant number of men who feel that there's something dishonest about a girl's  simply flirting with a guy and then not sleeping with him. Now, since we don't think that most flirts really intend to be SEXUALLY PROVOCATIVE, we think there's a fundamental communication problem here. And our personal opinion is that it comes in part from the fact that women and men in the West tend not be educated in the natural difference between the typical male and female experience of sexuality, in one particular respect.

We think many men, especially young men raised after the complete triumph of the sexual revolution, have no idea that it is perfectly possible for a woman to want men to think that she is pretty without wanting them to think she is sexy. There just aren't very many men who want to be handsome but don't want to be sexy, you see. Yet there are a lot of women who want all the men around them to think they are pretty, but who would feel quite threatened if they were suddenly to realize, "My God, all these men want to have sex with me."

Our respective daughters are delightful and playful and more than usually carefree, and each of us devoutly hopes they will all grow up to enjoy many an hour of carefree and casual flirting. It is, after all, one of life's more enjoyable pleasures, and is one hundred percent calorie-free. But each of us is (or will be, depending on the age of the particular daughter) careful to make sure that our respective daughters understand that flirting is, these days, a pleasure to be indulged in circumspectly. It is one of the great advantages of moving in devoutly religious circles that our daughters know an unusually large number of boys who have been 'carefully trained' by their parents to understand that girls such as our daughters are not to be assumed to be interested in casual sex. At church, my daughters can flirt in safety. At the local public high school, well, they need to choose their flirting partners very carefully indeed. And flirting with a complete stranger, in modern America, can turn real ugly, real fast.

It ought not be that way. But that's the way it is. And, one other thing, it could be worse.

For there are parts of the world in which the men are so obsessed with sex, and so utterly incapable of seeing women as capable of any non-sexual relationship, that any interaction with a man at all is considered to be a sexual advance. When merely to go unveiled is thought to be the equivalent of saying, "I am available" then the innocent pleasures of flirting are denied to women to a degree utterly unimaginable in the West. We will not explore in detail these societies, in which the fact, that women and men are not identical, leads the physically dominant men to conclude with satisfaction that women and men are not equal. We will simply close with this thought:

Those men in England who consider that a flirty woman is asking for it, might ask themselves whether the difference between themselves and the Pakistani acid-throwers who say that women who go unveiled are asking for it... they might ask themselves, we say, whether that difference is a difference in kind, or only a difference in degree.

Someone else who agrees., and who put it bluntly finds it "f....ing chilling". Heh.

Comments

[LOLtryingtobethe_spiritofecstasy]

Alexandra,

My sentences are oft made intently to carry away. Believe me! It's a self-fulfilling prophecy! But then, so is the nature of the poll question. Aha!

The publication didn't poll on the effects of public opinion created by the polling process itself. They could've introduced any idea in their "carried away" universe/cosmos primary-construct poll. BUT they didn't, they were specific.

To assist you in the un-derailment of this comment thread I'll say this:

The attitude expressed in this "provocative" poll result is dreadful, maligned and ultimately self-defeating besides representing outright cruelty.

[Alexandra]

SoE,

"They dump an arbitrary poll in their publication that humiliates the readers"

The questions are quite clear as far as the quick poll is concerned and the figures are astoundingly close, I have literally just now updated them. As far as the main one the Brits took it will be one of many, it is just that this subject is one that people are interested in and more importantly the results of the poll are quite astounding.

Perhaps you mean polls in general are useless, otherwise specifically speaking you are being a bit general.....LOL... Have you ever had the feeling that your sentence carries you away?

[spiritofecstasy]

To clarify:

The pollsters didn't choose anyother subject. From an infinite universe they chose just "one" subject. Just one idea.

From a beach that is ten miles long, the publication/pollsters chose one grain of sand.

It's called tipping your hand in poker. It reveals their goals and agenda.

With respect to the question of rapists and rape I think that what they are really doing is abusing everyone. They dump an arbitrary poll in their publication that humiliates the readers. They are asserting their authority by demoralizing others "below them."

Say a group of bloggers created specific blogs to confront such abusiveness. Everytime such a publication produced maliciousness the blog/gers would describe the nature of the ill endeavor. Believe me the bloggers would never have idle hands, they'd be busy. Because many things that pass for normal or pass for standard are actually punishing.

[spiritofecstasy]

This poll is so telling. No, not just about the nitwit, perverse answers. Telling because of the nature of the question.

Make a long story short; In an infinite universe they could have polled on any subject with any leading question.

They didn't.

[George Berryman]

I've been here just busy. This past weekend was nuts. Good but nuts.

[Alexandra]

OK George. You are officially banned from this site....Hahahahahahaha
Where have you been my Texas buddy, I've missed you. And no, just because you are friendly with the author does not mean you'll get your kicks here.
You do however get brownie points for opening the forum. I have just had the collaboration post from Kenny so that will be up in the main text when you wake up.

[George Berryman]

Flirting should by no means invite rape. But really we can look at this as a larger problem with leftist thought. Leftist thought completely hates personal accountability and favors nebulous moral ambiguities. Someone can't just be a murderer - no, they are a victim whose mother didn't love them and that drives them to kill. Someone can't just be a rapist - no, they have 'communication issues' or some other ridiculous 'reason' concocted by the soon to be patented 'Leftist Excuse-o-tron 3000.'

That being said, more art with naked chicks! ;)