There are things that I can’t do regarding Silence Is the Enemy. I can’t donate my blog revenue, since I don’t make any. I can’t entice you to click to raise cash with weird science (much of it involving sex that is hugely more comfortable to read about than anything I’ve been saying), the way Scicurious is, or with delightfully and fearfully made shoes, the way Isis is. I can’t dig into the political problems that make war and wartime rape more likely, or incite people who were going to troll anyway to do it for a good cause, the way Greg can (at least not on my blog).

What I can do is write about the peripheral issues that come up in the discussions, the misinformation and misunderstandings that make the general topic of rape harder to discuss. I’ve already done some of that, and I’ll continue to do more.

One of the tangential issues that came up in the thread that would not die is the statement “no means no.”

I really hate to have to point this out, believe me… but sometimes a simple “I’d rather not,” “I shouldn’t,” or even “no” isn’t clear enough. I won’t try to guess at numbers, I’m not qualified, but there are most certainly women who enjoy that particular game. Keep in mind that we’re talking about college kids here. Boys and girls in their late teens and early twenties for the most part, and clear communication about sex and relationships is going to be fairly uncommon. Again, I’m not even going to pretend to put numbers on it, but I’m absolutely certain that sometimes it is honest miscommunication.

“No means no” is a simple slogan, but it just doesn’t reflect reality. Imagine stopping only to be yelled at because your partner was getting into it and you ruined the mood. Imagine it happening when you’re young and still inexperienced and emotionally fragile. How many times do you think that has to happen before a person is capable of mistaking a sincere “no” for a repeat of the previous situation, if only for a short time?

I’m not trying to say it’s common… I’m just saying I’d be amazed if it never happened, and that I’d be amazed if there aren’t piles of similar ways a misunderstanding could happen in a moment of passion. If the “victim” says that it was a misunderstanding, I’m inclined to believe her unless there’s some other information to imply otherwise.

I’m going to assume that this is an honest statement of confusion, not an attempt at rape denialism or some kind of justification. It is worth noting, however, that I wasn’t sure when I read it or much of the conversation that followed from it. But it’s not useful to think of this as anything but a misconception that can be corrected, so I’m sticking with that.

The big problem with this statement is that “no means no” is not a slogan, meant to tell us what people are saying. It’s an instruction.

The way that our culture talks about sex–or, more importantly, doesn’t–is fundamentally screwed up. We’re not really talking, most of us. We’re role playing. We’re taking the things that we’re supposed to think and feel about sex and repeating them to one another in the place of figuring out and talking about our own feelings.

Religion hasn’t helped, of course. The inequality between the sexes and mistrust of pleasure that the dominant religions of our society have promoted place particular pressure on women to deny enjoyment of sex, to deny desire. That means that “no” has frequently meant something other than “no.” This is not a new concept.

However, it is a concept that came to be used by men as a justification for rape. As a means of excusing nonconsensuality, it came to be accepted and enshrined in a not insignificant portion of our media and our cultural mythos. That acceptance had to change.

“No means no” doesn’t mean that everyone will always tell you the truth. It means “The only way to be sure that you do not victimize someone is to believe that they are saying what they mean. Do that.” That part of it is true, and using counterexamples of when someone has not been entirely forthcoming doesn’t change that truth at all. All it does is provide fodder for the people who don’t want to follow the instructions.

In case it needs to be said, “no means no” goes for both men and women, and men were not the only people who needed to change their behavior. Communication never involves just one party. Men needed to act as though they believed something that often wasn’t true, but women needed to learn how to tell the truth. “No means no” means that women had to learn to speak about their own desire. They had to take responsibility for their own sexuality, societal pressures notwithstanding.

I don’t know how many times I heard while growing up, “If you’re not mature enough to talk about sex, you’re not mature enough to have it.” The topic at the time was birth control and preventing STIs, but the same absolutely goes for the topic of consent. This is similar to the idea behind prohibiting statutory rape–consent cannot be meaningfully given at certain maturity levels–although honesty and thoughtfulness are much better indicators of maturity than age. (Incidentally, for the folks who worry about being accused of rape after consensual sex, attending to a potential partner’s maturity has benefits for you, as well.)

In the end, “no means no” is about making the sexual landscape a better place to be: fewer victims, less blame laid on victims, more people seeing their desires fulfilled, better distributed work of communication. “No means no” isn’t about describing the world as it is. “No means no” is about remaking the world as we want it to be.

A Note to Rystefn and Lou

Some writers fall in love with words. The more I write, the more I know how little individual words mean. The more I interact with people very different from me, the more I ignore exact words and tell others to do the same. They’re just not that helpful. “Divided by a common language” and all that.

There were two words placed in close context in one of these posts, “soldier” and “rapist.” The first of these words invoked your pride in a way that probably no other word can. Rightfully so. About the only benefit you’re given in return for the privation and danger of serving your country as a solider is pride. That’s wrong, in that you deserve more in return for what you give, but that’s another post.

It’s also wrong in terms of what pride does, because that second word ran smack into that pride. Honestly, I can’t even begin to imagine how much that must have hurt. That’s a strong word and pride is very vulnerable. I hurt in sympathy, but I know it doesn’t approach what you must have felt to hit that. I’m pretty sure I can’t understand that.

However, and I ask you to bear with me as I explain, rather than starting to argue immediately, this does not mean that Greg owes you an apology for calling you a rapist. For two reasons.

The first is that he didn’t call you a rapist. At least not in the post or the comments on his blog. I will get to the other part later.

1. He elucidated someone else’s theory and asked for responses and challenges to it. Those words were fully embedded in that person’s theory.
2. He asked for a different word. No, he didn’t endorse Rystefn’s alternative. He didn’t argue with it either. Given the specificity he was looking for regarding a physical response and the confusion in the comments over whether “potential” is even meaningful, I get being hesitant.
3. He actually used quite a large number of words to explain what the theory was saying about behavior. In order to claim he called you a rapist in any way that is more meaningful than calling you a motherfucker, you need to ignore a lot of context, context that specifically states you didn’t rape anyone, even if the theory is correct in all its details.

None of that changes the fact that it hurt like hell. It just says that Greg did not call you a rapist.

The second reason is that “you owe me an apology” is a direct functional equivalent to “dance, monkey, dance.” Apologies are rituals. They’re socially useful, but they’re empty on their own. It would probably make you feel better for Greg to apologize for calling you a rapist, but given that he doesn’t believe he did, it wouldn’t mean anything. He’d be dancing.

If you want an apology, ask for one that doesn’t involve him saying something he doesn’t believe. Do you really think he’s any happier about the fact that you’re hurting than I am? (Actually, Rystefn, there’s a pretty fair chance that by the time we got to my blog thread, Greg was hurting you for hurting me. You can ask him.)

In the meantime, you’re walking around in a discussion about rape wrapped in a sense of entitlement. Somebody owes you something. It comes across in your focus, where you’re pushing people to discuss the details of marginalized sexuality, about which you know quite a bit, rather than the general topic of preventing rape. It comes across in your language, where you’re telling women they “have to” do something, generally agree with you. Sometimes apologize to you.

You’re telling these people to dance, too. Some of them are rape survivors. All of them are aware of their potential for victimization, particularly aware at the moment. I’m pretty sure you would generally be much more sensitive to both of these behaviors in this context, so I’m blaming the entitlement.

In most contexts, the shift in behavior that entitlement creates would make me unhappy, because my friends aren’t communicating. In this context, I find it creepy as hell. You’re giving me a very clear picture of how entitlement can lead to me, both personally and as a female in general, being utterly discounted, even by someone I consider a very close friend.

Guys, I understand and hate that you’re hurting, but you’re scaring me.

Silence Is the Enemy is, as should be obvious, an initiative to get people talking about rape, with the goal of stopping it and helping the victims. A large number of the people who don’t usually talk about this but are now are women.

For the record, we don’t tend to keep silent not because we’re not interested parties. We keep silent because there are risks to talking. There are the people who will mock us for talking about a bad experience.

More to the point, how did this thread come to be about you? It strikes me as a wee bit narcissistic of you, to turn a thread about the scope and limits of cultural relativism into an account of What Happened to Me When I was a Kid.

Just remember, Steph: it’s all about you. Everything’s about you.

There are the people who will insist that your concern be subsumed in the interest of uncovering the DARKER TRUTH.

Do you know that for nearly 30 years feminists were using pseudo-science to justify the belief (not the fact) that men were the only ones who are violent in a relationship? For 30 years, dozens of studies were fudged to support this LIE. Eventually, the truth came out: one third of hospital visits related to DV are from men, victimization studies amongst younger couples show that women are slightly more violent than men. And it turns out that the most violent form of relationship is same-sex female (i.e. lesbians).

And then there are your friends–bless their myopic hearts. Let me tell you a story.

I sent an email to a male friend yesterday afternoon because I was finding a combination of arguments made in all this mess to be creepy and he had a perspective that could be useful. I used the word, “creepy,” in the email and asked for a gut check because I know I’m not a disinterested party in this discussion. This is not an easy subject to talk about for the reasons listed above and others, and I’ve been getting less and less comfortable as the week has worn on. I was going out of my way to be fair to the party in question.

For reasons of no importance, the email didn’t reach its target until this morning. My friend and I chatted back and forth a little bit. He asked me how things were going. I responded.

Stressful. I’ve just spent this week talking and writing about rape with a bunch of guys who have told me:

• I have no business bringing personal experience into the discussion and making it all about me.
• Women lie about these things, you know.
• What about the men?
• It’s more important to have fun sex than to be clear on consent at the beginning and throughout the process.
• Their gut impression is more valid than my interested and studied opinion.
• Where is my outrage about name calling?

Yep. Stressful.

That wasn’t going out of my way to be fair in the least, but he’d asked.

As he dug into the thread, he commented about the lack of communication going on in the comments. I directed him a bit more toward the parts that were “creeping me out,” including a lack of apparent empathy. Eventually, he came back with a fairly dispassionate analysis of the theory of the rape switch and some commentary on the nature and complexity of sexuality.

I asked, “So, in all this, why was I not able to sleep last night?”

He responded, “Because you hate to be wrong.”

When I had choked back both the urge to cry and the urge to rip his throat out, I carefully asked him to “be a little more specific about what I said yesterday that was wrong that I would know was wrong that would keep me awake.”

The response: “I was just poking you, I wasn’t actually serious.”

That was when I did cry. Hell, I’m crying now, writing about it.

There is a fundamental disconnect here that I do not understand. What about “we’re talking about rape, and I’m creeped out and stressed to the point that I’m having trouble sleeping and want someone to double-check me on something” invites poking? For that matter, what about “when it comes to my safety, I don’t care about fine distinctions in words” invites people to tell me I need to stick to higher moral ground than the trained guys with weapons?

Yes, those are questions. I’m still closing the comments on this post, because I truly can’t predict what I’ll do if someone tries to answer them in terms of their feelings and needs instead of mine. If someone wants to talk about it, they can open a thread somewhere where I don’t have to see it.

I had enough not being heard. Y’all can try it for a change.

Update: DuWayne’s got a somewhat ridiculously titled post open for anyone who wants to talk among themselves.

If the point of Silence Is the Enemy is to get people talking, this post at Greg’s about whether there is a “rape switch” that can be triggered in warfare is doing the trick. Of course, much of the talk is debate over rape statistics and over this section of the post:

In the [genteel] society in which we imagine ourselves living (at least according to many of the comments on the above cited post) the switch is off, and stays off for most people’s lives. But there are circumstances in which most men’s switch is turned on. The switch being on does not mean that rape will happen. It simply means that the man (with the switch on) is now a rapist, whether he actually rapes or not (but he probably will), and when the switch is off, he is not (so he probably won’t). It is a bit of a metaphor, and a strained one (see comments by commenter Elizabeth) at that.

The first comment is from Rystefn, objecting to the classification of “rapist,” something he does throughout the thread. Finally, he wants to know, from me:

Oh, and while we’re on the subject, why is it that you’re so opposed to calling actual rapists monsters, but stand idly by and let innocent innocent men be called rapists without a word of complaint?

(Monsters is explained here.)

DuWayne’s first response is much less rejecting:

My gut reaction to this is that it’s total bullshit. I want it to be bullshit – almost need it to be. But I then consider the recent discussions about torture and my acceptance that while the circumstances are far-fetched (i.e. on a scale with getting struck by lightening three times, each time standing in the same spot) I can think of hypothetical situations in which I would not only condone torture, but wouldn’t hesitate to engage in it myself.

Eventually, however, he posted his response on his blog. Much of it is a very eloquent exposition of one part of why I don’t talk about monsters in general. I highly recommend reading it.

At the end of his post is his response to the rapist question:

Now a reasonable reading of this discussion will show that this is not something that Greg is saying as an absolute. Indeed, it is clear that he is willing to be convinced otherwise, though he strongly suspects that this is the case. I am going to answer the question in the title and respond to the idea in this quote with an emphatic and resounding; No, this is complete and absolute bullshit.

A person does not move from having the potential, to being the thing, unless they actually commit the act. The fact that a lot of people who end up fitting a similar set of variables commit acts of rape, does not mean that everyone who fits those variables is a rapist. It simply means that those who don’t rape, require a different set of variables to become a rapist. […]

I’m sorry Greg, but unless and until a person actually commits the act, they only have the potential to commit the act. Until the specific variables that will cause them to act are met, they are in fact, incapable of committing the act.

Read the whole thing.

I understand where Rystefn and DuWayne are coming from on the questions of moral judgment and punishment. For those purposes, the presumption of innocence should absolutely be maintained. However, that still leaves me with a question.

As a potential victim in this situation, what do I gain from making that assumption of innocence?

There are a lot of benefits, to me, of treating that large increase in incidence of rape as a universal, particularly if my goal is to prevent my rape in a war situation or that of others in a potential war situation. If I avoid all male soldiers in war, I am much more likely to avoid being raped. If I can stop war from happening, I can keep many more women from being raped. If I assume that no man is a rapist, even in war, until it’s proven, there’s a very good chance I can’t do either. But both of those are the point of Silence Is the Enemy.

So, what outweighs the potential costs, to me, of acting as though Greg’s statement were untrue?