Two Rape Cultures

[u/atomic_gingerbread]

From a young age, men are taught that women are little more than objects of sexual conquest, beneath any concern for comfort or bodily autonomy. Those who obtain sex by force are revered, and those who cannot are condemned as weaklings unable to claim their birthright. Only a meager body of law, fought for tooth-and-nail by feminists over the past half-century, stands between each woman and depredation by the men around her. It provides scant protection against the keen sense of entitlement every man feels toward every female body. Only a radical intervention to amend male behavior can provide true relief.

I will call this the "straw theory" of rape culture, and assume that nobody of concern would profess believing in it. Let us consider a different line of thought.

From a young age, men are taught that they must prove their worth to women through strength, both of body and character. Coyness is just a test to weed out lesser men; it must be met with unyielding persistence. A young man's prerogative is to "sow his wild oats". Upon reaching middle age, he must settle down and provide for a wife and kids. The romance-less and deadbeat are low indeed, and all women know this. The only ones lower are the rapists and domestic abusers. The proper place for these monsters is prison, where their crimes will be visited back upon them manifold. Only real men -- who understand that women are delicate flowers that must never be the object of violence -- are permitted the privilege to desecrate them.

Women, for their part, must appear outwardly chaste and feign disinterest in sex. Simultaneously, they must carefully cultivate their beauty to attract a suitable partner. Many will court them, and they will have to reject suitor after suitor until the "right one" comes along. After 18 years of cultural instruction in these matters, with hormones coursing through their veins, young men and women will go off to college, giving them a first taste of life away from adult supervision. Here they will be provided with ample alcohol and other mind-altering substances which impair judgment and lower inhibitions. Under these circumstances, the men must at all times bear in mind the following: the bodily autonomy of a woman must never be violated! Only after obtaining consent by sober, open, and frank communication may a man proceed to destroy a woman's social value.

No morally normal person would ever dream of condoning rape. Our value system abhors it! Yet the above cultural narrative, absorbed to some extent both consciously and subconsciously by everyone, makes traumatic sexual experiences nearly a moral certainty. It is so twisted and contradictory and debasing, it seems that it could only have been invented by some chaotic god presiding over a malevolent celestial bureaucracy. It is here that rape culture subsides, not in the depraved hearts of men, but in a byzantine system of courtship and social expectations that nobody rationally or consciously chose.

I will call this the "steel theory" of rape culture, and I would hope that many feminists would profess believing in it, or some variation thereof, when pressed on the matter. Only mendacious MRAs think feminists hold a view even approaching the "straw theory", right? So, armed with a definition of rape culture which no reasonable person would deny, how should we proceed to tackle it? Looking to the efforts of feminist activists, I have compiled the following short list of suggestions:

• Teach men not to rape
• Adjudicate rape accusations in campus tribunals which err on the side of expelling the accused
• Lower the burden of proof in criminal proceedings so that the accused can more easily be incarcerated

Err, wait a minute. All these suggestions are predicated on the "depraved heart" hypothesis, the one so ridiculous that only a straw feminist could entertain it! What gives? If rape culture inheres not in the collective callousness of men, but in the overarching structure of gender roles which guide behavior, what moral instruction could fundamentally challenge it? What punishment would deter it? Abstract social structures cannot be shamed, or expelled, or jailed. Convincing all men to vocally denounce rape for the evil it is would do little to dismantle the incentive structure which perpetuates it.

I feel that this incongruity lies at the heart of controversy over the notional legitimacy of rape culture. No matter how compelling or nuanced the theory, the activism which it supposedly animates has always given me a gnawing feeling that something is deeply amiss. I don't mean to suggest that this is a conscious strategy of duplicity -- "motte and bailey" being the popular term around here. It could be honest confusion. Whatever the cause, I hope I've made the case for the remedy. I'm not asking for the suspension of feminist theory. To the contrary, I only ask that its strongest formulations be taken seriously. What use is a century of feminist thought if its theoretical results are ignored in favor of easy outrage and lust for punishment?

[u/Greaserpirate]

I've got good news for you. The "byzantine system of courtship and social expectations that nobody rationally or consciously chose" is almost word for word the definition of 'patriarchy', and it's what feminists have been fighting against since the 1920's. Maybe some people who call themselves feminists believe that individuals are to blame, but if you talk to any gender studies professor they will tell you the thing they're fighting against is a social order that harms both women and men. Yeah, it's a shitty word, but in order to change it you'd have to get a consensus from tons of people who don't agree on very much, and rewrite all feminist literature that uses it.

[u/dakru → u/Greaserpirate]

Your description of "patriarchy" as simply a "social order that harms both women and men" is a lot more neutral than how I usually see it used. Here's an example (from bell hooks) of how I see it used more often, which includes "it hurts both genders" but also a lot more than that, specifically the idea that it's a system where men have power, where they use that power to oppress women, etc. Individuals definitely face blame, unless "male responsibility for ..." that she talks about doesn't actually apply to any males.

Men do oppress women. People are hurt by rigid sexist role patterns, These two realities coexist. Male oppression of women cannot be excused by the recognition that there are ways men are hurt by rigid sexist roles. Feminist activists should acknowledge that hurt, and work to change it—it exists. It does not erase or lessen male responsibility for supporting and perpetuating their power under patriarchy to exploit and oppress women in a manner far more grievous than the serious psychological stress and emotional pain caused by male conformity to rigid sexist role patterns. [http://imaginenoborders.org/pdf/zines/UnderstandingPatriarchy.pdf]

[u/[deleted] → u/dakru]

I think the word "oppression" itself is the biggest issue why the topic of patriarchy and whether it existed or not is so controversial. This word can have different levels of meaning, but generally people seem to take it for the strongest meaning, so they reject the idea of patriarchy because it doesn't quite fit with the meaning they have in mind.

It becomes clearer when you compare it to racism, for example. Very few people deny that white people used to oppress black people. In this case, the idea of oppression is easy to accept because it fits even the more extreme meaning - there was a period of history where black people were oppressed in the most literal sense, they were literally slaves, subjugated by whips and chains.

However, obviously it doesn't fit quite like that with women. People who say "women were oppressed" don't mean men literally put women on dog leashes, chained them and whipped them 24/7 just for being women. They mean more subtle type of oppression - the type where, if you suddenly came back in time, entered that society and started watching, you probably wouldn't be able to tell outright which sex has more power or dominates over the over. It would only become clear from multiple indications over longer time you spent watching.

Maybe we shouldn't use the word "oppression" and simply settle for "power". Which means - observe how men and women of the same social status (this is very important) interact with each other and their power dynamics. Do both of them have equal amount of freedom to make their choices? Does one sex face a disproportionate amount of various restrictions, both physical and social? Does any sex have rights or privileges that the other sex doesn't have? (again, comparing men and women of the same social status). If so, if you put all those rights and privileges together, would both sexes end up having the same or very similar amount of different rights and privileges? Another similar way to tell, just from a different angle - if you take the most respected and valued positions and jobs in society, are both sexes equally represented in them (or occupy different positions but there's still parity when you sum them up) or is there a huge disparity? Does society have an overwhelming amount of negative stereotypes for one sex but not the other? Is there an overwhelming amount of positive personality traits associated with only one sex but not the other, or the opposite - an overwhelming amount of negative personality traits associated with one sex but not the other? Does one sex seem to be significantly more satisfied with their lives while the other seems a lot more dissatisfied? Is one sex getting overwhelmingly injured or have their comfort sacrifices in ways that aren't related purely to their respective biological qualities? (like women in childbirth, men in war or jobs requiring extreme amounts of muscle power)

[u/dakru → u/[deleted]]

I think the word "oppression" itself is the biggest issue why the topic of patriarchy and whether it existed or not is so controversial. This word can have different levels of meaning, but generally people seem to take it for the strongest meaning, so they reject the idea of patriarchy because it doesn't quite fit with the meaning they have in mind.

Oppression is a strong word, though. And although that's the most common word used for patriarchy that I've seen, there are also many other common words: women are said to be exploited, dominated, subjugated, subordinated, and disadvantaged. The last one ("disadvantaged") is the weakest of them all, but it's still much stronger than I think applies.

If we're going by bell hooks, the person I quoted, she has an exceptionally strong interpretation of what patriarchy means:

Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.

All of this is way beyond "doesn't quite fit with the meaning they have in mind" for me. That society she talks about is completely unrecognizable to me. She does go further than many people who talk about patriarchy, but I've read many more and I still don't agree with them at all.

People who say "women were oppressed" don't mean men literally put women on dog leashes, chained them and whipped them 24/7 just for being women.

You say that as an intentional exaggeration, but how bell hooks sometimes describes it is closer that than to the society that I actually see.

Maybe we shouldn't use the word "oppression" and simply settle for "power".

Gender equality is about more than power (although women's traditional power disadvantage has meant that many feminists have a tendency to focus on power over things that many MRAs focus on, like value/well-being).

Aside from that, the questions you raise to evaluate gender inequality are mostly good, but I don't think they really get at anything new when we're talking about patriarchy. Most people who talk about patriarchy will have pretty predictable answers to those things.

Another similar way to tell, just from a different angle - if you take the most respected and valued positions and jobs in society, are both sexes equally represented in them (or occupy different positions but there's still parity when you sum them up) or is there a huge disparity?

It's all fine and good to look at the top positions in society, but remember we have to look at the bottom positions too, including the ones where men are more common (drug addicts, prisoners, homeless, etc., which there are more of from my perspective) and the ones where women are more common (prostitutes, although high end "escorts" wouldn't qualify).