How Men Can Talk about Women’s Issues
Although there may only be one Feminist Ryan Gosling, there are other men out there offering their support for women’s issues. Any movement fighting against oppression needs to accept allies to maximize the potential to succeed; however, there is often a disconnect in dialogue that prohibits such collaboration from happening.
Last Friday at BU’s weekly Coffee and Conversation, there was a discussion on rape culture stemming from the recent events surrounding the men’s hockey team. We had real talk about slut shaming, survivors, and educating ourselves. The conversation ended with the men feeling as if they were not being given a right to contribute. In my opinion, possession of a penis is not a crime deemed punishable by exclusion. Still, men need to understand a few points before engaging in these conversations.
To all the men who see the obstacles women face and want to take action:
You will never fully understand,
You may say that you feel fear when walking down a dark alley at night or when being pressured sexually, but the truth is that the situations are different. We may not all know the exact probability of being sexually assaulted, but we know that it is much higher for women. We also know there is a potential to be impregnated by a rapist. And while anyone can contract STDs, differences in our anatomy make it more likely for us to suffer from long-term consequences.
but you can try.
Everyone appreciates it when others make a genuine attempt to understand them, so make your goal known. Do not say “I know how you feel because, I too, feel fear when walking down a dark alley. Say “If I feel fear when walking down a dark alley, I can only imagine how you feel.”
Sometimes it needs to be about women,
When we hear about the horrors of men sexually assaulting women, it is usually in the form of a quiet whisper from a close friend with whom we’ve spent years building up a level of trust. Or we hear about rape warfare in a far away country that, while horrifying, is easy to ignore.
Or we hear about a young girl crying wolf to extract money from a wealthy celebrity. While the actual percentage of false accusations vastly varies depending on the source, focusing on them contributes to underreporting – which accounts for an estimated 15 of 16 rapists walking away as free people.
So when the media and Boston University bring attention to an issue that is immediately relevant to our community and what we go through, we cannot help but focus on it. We get that men are also subjected to sexual assault, but the current issue is about men assaulting women. Understand that women who are not given an opportunity to speak about such issues as often as they would like needed to finally speak up.
Many of the men felt they were not allowed to speak at Coffee and Conversation, but that does not mean that they did not contribute. Listening is the most important contribution to a conversation. Presence alone makes a difference.
but let’s make it about us.
Since sexual assault is not gender specific, the conversation should not be either. Let’s talk about requiring every BU student to take a class on gender to bring diverse viewpoints to those discussions. Let’s talk about teaching our children to respect each other in order to eliminate the problem. Let’s stop talking about talking and start working towards solutions.
Category: Collegiate Feminista, featured
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Carly (CAS '12) is a Political Science and Economics major from Hermitage, PA. She loves when people tell her about themselves- the real things- the things that are deep. Carly wants to hear your experiences, your dreams; your strengths, your imperfections; she wants all of you. She wants to not only see the world for what it is, but also for what it can become.Subscribe
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First off, I don’t think any men at coffee and conversation, or really anywhere for that matter, claim to understand what it would be like for a woman to be raped; consequently, I don’t really think that’s an issue that’s causing problems with discussing women’s issues.
Also, why is rape a women’s issue? Disregarding the admittedly lower probability of men being raped, are men not a part of the equation here? Especially considering the recent events regarding the BU hockey team, does it not matter whether the guys did it or not? Does it matter to you that they haven’t been proven guilty yet?
Clearly it doesn’t matter to certain people when the stat’s used to support this belief are something so misleading as claiming that “15 of 16 rapists walk away free”. First off, there is a big difference between sexual assault and rape, certain people might not recognize it as such, but our legal system does. “If an arrest is made there is an 80% chance or prosecution.” So what happens to the other 20%? Well they either plead guilty, which I assume would be considered a good thing by certain people, or the government doesn’t have enough evidence to bring a case against them (and in a sexual assault case it takes very little evidence to get someone to court. Usually just a woman claiming the sexual assault occurring and some piece of evidence to put the defendant in the same room as the woman). So if you believe in our legal system and the constitution, then you can’t really find fault in this one. Next, “if there is a prosecution, there is a 58% chance of a conviction.” The real obvious one here is that this means that 42% are found not guilty. Not guilty. The government couldn’t find enough support to claim that they’re guilty of committing the sexual assault. While I am sure that some men who actually did commit the crime don’t get charged at this point, I think it’s important to note that it’s very possible that the people being charged with sexual assault didn’t actually commit sexual assault. They didn’t do it. Finally, of the convictions, “there’s a 69% chance the convict will spend time in jail.” This goes back to me first point here, that there’s a difference between sexual assault and rape and sometimes it may not be appropriate to send men to jail for the crime they’re convicted of. Taking these things into consideration the stat should read “In sexual assault occurrences, only 9.43% of the sexual assaulters in those occurrences are caught and found guilty and only 6.51% of the total spend time in jail.” I wish we could find and convict every person who is guilty of sexual assault, but I think it’s pretty destructive to hope that we just convict more people, regardless of if they’re guilty or not. Also, a few men brought this up in the conversation and they had to deal with the backlash from certain people, but if you really want to increase the number of convictions, then women who are sexually assaulted need to pick up the phone more often and call the authorities.
I think it’s important to note that the stats also show that around 53.6% of people arrested for sexual assault are not found guilty (assuming none plead guilty, which we don’t have the stats for here). That’s the majority. And you’re still going to tell me this isn’t about men? Just because the woman’s role is that of the victim, doesn’t give women the right to claim that the discussion “needs to be about women”. The issue the men had in coffee and conversation was that any time a man had an opinion on the issue that didn’t fit into the box of what certain women claimed to be about what this topic should be, those women tried to stifle the men’s opinions. It was incredibly hypocritical for a group of people who fight so hard for an open discussion on difficult issues to attempt to limit the opinions in the conversation they didn’t want to hear and didn’t agree with. The effect they had on the conversation was the exact opposite of what they said they wanted.
Carly, I really enjoyed this post. I would like to respond to your thoughts and Riley’s about whether rape is a women’s issue or not. To Riley- I think you have missed the point of this post. You latched onto one statement that may not resonate with you (which is fine), but this post isn’t about statistics or the logistical issues of how men are found innocent or guilty for rape or sexual assault. This post is about trying to set a neutral tone for a conversation where men and women can speak freely about this issue. I understand that sometimes men can be unfairly accused of sexual assault or rape, and that in the end the accusations can result in unjustified consequences. But whether the accusations are fair or not, it is important that people can openly discuss issues related to sexual assault and remain unbiased because of their gender. I do feel that rape is a women’s issue. That doesn’t mean that men are excluded though. The issue of rape goes far beyond the act itself. It is about how men and women talk about sex and talk about each other. It is about abusive relationships. It is about insecurity and fear. It is about cultured gender laws that wrongly position men and women in a way that rape and sexual assault can be acceptable.
What bothers me the most is your statement, ” but if you really want to increase the number of convictions, then women who are sexually assaulted need to pick up the phone more often and call the authorities.”
While I agree with you and I wish with all my heart that every woman who has ever been sexually assaulted or raped could call the authorities, I’m afraid its not that simple. What about the shame a woman faces when she is raped or assaulted? What if she is too traumatized to be able to retell her story and relive it again and again? What if she was assaulted or raped by her husband or a boyfriend who she can’t remove herself from because of other circumstances?
Sometimes it’s not about the numbers. Try your hardest to put yourself in the shoes of one of these women, and then think about whether it is, at its core, a women’s issue. I agree with Carly that I don’t think men will ever fully understand, but it is severely important to try.
I have to say, Carly, I have really mixed feelings about this post. I am 100% in favor of the solutions you pose at the end and commend you for suggesting them, and I am a huge fan of the last paragraph in general, as well as the statement about listening being one of the most important aspects of a conversation. Spot on, and I wish it had been articulated at C&C on Friday.
Now. As a woman, I understand that the chances are higher that I will be raped or sexually assaulted than someone who does not have a vagina, and in that sense, I’m more than tempted to agree that men will never fully understand a woman’s fears of sexual assault. But I really, really don’t like having these conversations in terms of gender – you say you don’t either, but your post doesn’t live up to that statement. I understand the prevalence of sexual assault survivors being women, and I’m not denying that. But if you wanted to accomplish a means of open discussion between men and women, I don’t think titling this post “How Men Can Understand Women’s Issues” accomplished it. Discussions of rape as a crime should, in an ideal world, be genderless – we’re not there yet, and I get that, but we’ve got to be striving towards it. Let’s not talk about “women’s issues.” Let’s talk about rape. Let’s talk about sexual assault. Because you’re right, men will not understand women’s fears or issues in regards to rape. But hey, let’s play devil’s advocate for a second: do you think women will ever fully understand the shame and trauma a male rape or assault victim feels when a ~women’s issue~ happens to him?
Also, I’d like to pose the following to humanity: can we stop discussing rape in entirely heterosexual terms? Men can rape men, and women can rape women.
Thanks for your thought-provoking comment! I do not think that women will ever fully understand the shame and trauma a male survivor feels. Saying otherwise would be creating a double standard that I can understand them but they cannot understand me. In attempting to understand, maybe my use of the phrase “women’s issue” in discussing these issues was the wrong word choice. Men might feel uncomfortable admitting that they were raped precisely for that reason- saying you didn’t want sex can come off as a blow to manliness (Some info on Male Sexual Assault: http://rainn.org/get-information/types-of-sexual-assault/male-sexual-assault).
I do not like having these conversations in terms of gender but feel a conversation on these issues relating specifically to women is a necessary precursor. I get that rape and sexual harassment are not exclusively women’s issues, but also feel there is a need to acknowledge the differences in the backgrounds that we are coming from in order to allow the dialogue to proceed further. Once our backgrounds are known and our differences are set aside, then we can all talk about what it is we have in common- a desire to work towards solutions.
Thanks for replying! Yay discussion
I appreciate you including those statistics on male sexual assault. I’m poking around RAINN’s site now looking for LGBT survivor statistics, but can’t seem to find any. Hm. Anyways, I do agree that there need to be some separate conversations before there can be a whole discussion; however, I guess my point is that I don’t think even those separate conversations should be branding the crime – only the experience. It’s okay to talk about rape that happened to women/female survivors, and rape that happened to men/male survivors, but I think the trouble comes when you brand the crime itself that happened to these people with a gender. Crime does not have gender, only the survivors do, and I think it’s an important distinction to make, even in the early conversations. Rhetoric has an awfully powerful effect on determining the outcomes of conversations and setting the precedent for future references and discussions, and it’s going to take a lot of work to rebrand rape as a genderless crime.
But yes, ultimately, it’s about working towards solutions. Educate, and educate early, for starters. Continue to educate. Keep the crime in the conversation.
I agree with your re-framing and re-characterization of the issue at hand, Carly, and I appreciate the nuanced and carefully considered approach that you take. I especially agree with your point about the fear of being in a dark alley–the compassionate approach is checking into one’s own feelings on the matter in order to empathize with what probably is the case with women (as in, “since I feel this way, I can only imagine how you must feel!”) That validates a woman’s perspective.
I’m not sure the issue is that men weren’t allowed to speak at Coffee and Conversation–because we most certainly were. I spoke once and spent the rest of the time listening with open ears to the experiences and views of the women in the room, and really trying to see where they were coming from. But you’re right to point out that in order to contribute to this conversation, men really just need to take a seat and listen in silence. In order to help women be heard, we need to stop talking and hear them. I think the mistakes I made friday night, during the argument that inspired this post, were directly attributable to the fact that I was speaking about myself, and not quietly asking questions of the women present, and sitting back to let them take the floor.
You’re also right to address the point that the men who put themselves out there as potential allies, willing to listen and understand, cannot be shut out of the conversation because “possession of a penis is not a crime deemed punishable by exclusion.” Surely, I can never fully understand the fear of sexual assault many women face, often on a daily basis. But because I am a human being, I have the capacity for empathy, and the capacity to try and understand. So I have to be allowed to try, but of course what that means is not to talk, but to be silent. The old adage, “silence is golden,” applies well here.
Riley, I think if this were a conversation about the legalistic issues with sexual assault, then your comment would be more appropriate. I know where Carly is coming from in this post because she and I were both present for a shouting match I had this weekend with two young women about women’s struggles and sexual assault. The issue here is not that the numbers are wrong, or that the statistics are off. This is a conversation about emotions, and emotional empathy.
But since you think in terms of numbers, I’ll meet you there. All this information is on the Wikipedia page for Rape Statistics. The FBI reports that 8% of sexual assault allegations it receives are “unfounded,” which is not same as being false, because what is unfounded is really up to the investigators’ discretion (and personal opinions). But false accusations are small peanuts compared to how may assaults never even get brought to the light. A report in England found that 75-95% of all sexual assaults go unreported–so if you take the 2009 number of ~13,000 reported sexual assaults as only 5-15% of the actual numbers, in reality there are upwards of around 260,000 sexual assaults in England every single year, mostly unreported. And if you look at the number of reported sexual assaults in the United States–89,000 in 2009–that means there were actually something like 1.8 million rapes that year here in the U.S. Then if you take the statistics that 91% of sexual assaults are perpetrated on women, and only 9% are on men, but an overwhelming 99% of the perpetrators are men… even the numbers say this is primarily a women’s issue.
But this issue isn’t about the data. It’s about the emotions. It’s primarily a kinesthetic conversation, not an auditory conversation. In order to make any headway with this and feel like we’re connecting with women on the issue, we need to get out of our heads and into our guts. Stop THINKING and start FEELING. Many women feel they can’t speak up about sexual assault because it’s an emotionally traumatic experience, and the fear, confusion, and upset that goes along with it can’t be expressed completely accurately with language. It certainly cannot be reduced to numbers and statistics. The emotions are raw, and confusing, and uncomfortable, and in order to make any headway with this conversation with women, we must put down the data and engage kinesthetically. People are primarily emotional beings, and emotions aren’t rational. Numbers don’t come anywhere close to describing that.
Carly, great post! I’ll agree with most of what Mike said. I really am happy that you wrote this post to begin with because this is a hard subject to write about because you are really putting yourself out there; open to criticism. Unfortunately, I think a few of the readers above missed the big points that you were trying to make. I think your post brings to light an overarching issue in our society of men saying too much and too often trying to speak for women–WHEN THEY NEED TO SHUT UP AND LISTEN! Less than 17% of the people in congress are women, while just over 50% of the US population is women; a statistic that has many more contributing factors, but do you get my point?
Lastly, there are many men that want to do everything they can to help, though they might not completely understand or know how it feels, they mean well and are an important ally. As a feminist (as much as male-ly possible) I’m one of those allies!
peace
One of my close friends is male and was raped. I’ll never forget how much our skin stood on edge when he told me, how the room froze because he’d never told anyone. In no way do I believe rape is something only a woman can understand.
People of specific races and socioeconomic status are more statistically likely to rape and be raped in the US than others. Does that mean only those people can really understand? Of course not.
But I do believe it’s something people who have never experienced sexual assault, rape, or threat cannot understand. And even then the circumstances are so different that two assaulted people can easily not understand each other. Was it a stranger, a family member, a boyfriend of many years? While inebriated, intimate, casual, unaware?
Sadly, most people will not feel comfortable talking about their rape or picking up the phone to report it. We have such a culture of victim blaming and of logistics – ideas that it’s not real rape if she knows him, or they’ve had sex before, or he doesn’t ejaculate, the list goes on and on. More rape survivors would pick up the phone and report it if they weren’t judged this way by those who don’t understand – and that category definitely includes many women as well. Just the word “victim” arouses so many sentiments – fragile, ignorant, innocent, but ultimately, violated. It’s easy to tell someone you got mugged or held at gunpoint or attacked on the street. But sexual assault holds these implications of being mutilated, less than human, unworthy of love as we feel it should be expressed. Furthermore, these barriers in understanding only rise when we use figures and stereotypes, slut-shaming and one-sided statistics in place of actually listening and understanding one another. I don’t believe it’s right to force survivors to report rape if they don’t want to – they might not be in a safe situation to do so, have faced too much trauma, or honestly just want to move on with their lives and think a legal process would only extend the pain. Every person is different and will handle it differently. There is not one face of rape, nor of understanding it.
Carly,
This is an interesting thread and article. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
I can understand the need to have closed conversations that center on a particular gender and I support such conversations when done in a manner that is not used to create a hierarchy of survivorhood or promote minimization of other survivors. In short, the way these conversations are identified must be taken into consideration to avoid confusion, generalizations or ownership of traumatic experiences based on narrowly defined criteria that are not openly stated.
For instance, a conversation that claims to be about rape culture or sexual violence, but is really ONLY about how the same affect women is misleading. If it is only to be about how those topics affect women, then that needs to be spelled out. If a conversation is identified as meant to discuss rape, then people will rightfully expect it to be about rape. If it is only about how women are affected by rape than that caveat must be clear and spelled out in plan language. To do otherwise, a discussion/organization runs the risk of appearing to be engaging in minimization or erasure of survivors who don’t fit that narrowly defined criteria.
I am a male rape survivor of a female rapist who drugged a drink and then raped me repeatedly over several hours while unconscious and continued same after the drugs wore off. I don’t claim to understand how female rape survivors feel and I sure do not expect that they will understand how I feel.
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/ive-got-the-t-shirt-and-the-trauma-response-to-go-with-it/
Given that the overwhelming vast majority of women have NOT been raped, it is a bit frustrating as an ACTUAL RAPE SURVIVOR who just happens to have a penis to be told repeatedly that rape is a women’s issue, quite often by women who have NOT been raped. Viewed through that lens, I find myself often shaking my head in frustration. My experience as a survivor has made the issue mine as well. For nearly 20 years, I have lived and breathed the consequences of her decision to inflict her will on me. I’ve surprised many women who feel comfortable speaking authoritatively on sexual violence sans personal experience with my knowledge of PTSD response and first hand accounts of victim-blaming. I take issue with people male OR female who profess to speak for/about survivors but do not really understand our core issues and challenges, except from an academic perspective. In the larger narrative on sexual violence there is a ton of arrogant ignorance that needs to be replaced by empathy, learning and listening – regardless of gender.
I fully support narrowly defined discussions and exploration of themes on whatever criteria (to include gender) is useful to those controlling the conversation, but my patience is lessening for the hijacking of issues and generalizations on the basis of the gender when there are millions of male survivors dealing with PTSD and Rape Trauma Syndrome across the globe. We are not only allies, but the actual affected parties as well.
I can speak for days to my own experiences with rape culture, rape jokes, victim-blaming, denial and outright mockery. A person who has not experienced such from the perspective of a rape survivor (regardless of gender identification) is ill-equipped to really relate and should NOT be engaging any form of silencing or survivor hierarchy. Quite simply, it is not their right.