Desensitization to Rape in Society

After reading Andrea Dworkins piece, I was moved by how much her writing spoke to me and how I identify as a feminist. What I thought was the most important about her article was how she included men into the argument, and basically shut down the argument of “but not ALL men do it.” Yes it is true that not all men rape, but these men who claim that this fight is not their fight are missing so many of the critical points that feminists have been making for so many years.

A quote that stuck out for me in the article was when Dworkin referred to the defence of, “well it happens to men too.” She says, “That is not the equality we are struggling for. We could change our strategy and say: well, okay, we want equality; we'll stick something up the ass of a man every three minutes.”(Dworkin, 1983) Yes, rape happens to men, and yes there are male strippers and male prostitutes but that does not change the statistics on male to female related rapes and it does not mean that our society is not in drastic need of changing. Dworkin goes on to explain that “[equality] cannot coexist with rape. It cannot. And it cannot coexist with pornography or with prostitution or with the economic degradation of women on any level, in any way” (Dworkin, 1983) and I think this relates to Mackinnon’s concept of the men being “systematically conditioned not even to notice what women want. Especially if they consume pornography.”(Mackinnon, 1989)  Both these statements made me think of the desensitization that our society is exposed to because of the “rape fantasy” that is exploited by the porn industry. It is because of this desensitization that the defence of the perpetrator “not knowing” that the woman did not consent and therefore did not have the required mens rea to be found guilty of a rape charge continues to happen in the courts. If men are exposed to dialect where no really doesn’t mean no, it means she likes it rough, it is not hard to see why the courts continue to view this as a meaningful defence. The shock value has been lost because we are exposed to it on a daily basis. We are exposed to it not only in porn, but also in advertisements and in the “corpse chic” that Cressida Heyes talked of in her lecture. When the idea of rape loses its shock value, and men are systematically taught that no doesn’t always mean no, the argument of “not all men” loses any little value that it might have had.

Furthermore, what I find most troubling about this argument is just how sad it is. If you cannot tell the difference between a woman that wants to have sex with you, and a woman who is not consenting to sex, what does that say about you as a human? I find it sad that this can be used as an argument, and I find it sad that society does not see how debilitating this is to both genders.

Finally, when we talked in class about whether or not men fear feminism, I believe they do and I believe that they have good reason too. I believe that this fear is deep seated in the idea they themselves will be treated as they treat women. And that would be a scary thought for any man (yes, all men).