Kate Manne objects to telling men to learn to care about rape by thinking of their daughters.
But there are at least three things wrong with thinking of it in this way.
First off, it should not take a woman in general, or someone’s wife in particular, to persuade a man in Morrison’s position to take decisive action over a problem as serious as allegations of rape in his own workplace.
That we still have to try to make people care about these devastating allegations wreaks its own kind of trauma – the trauma of dealing with hostile indifference in the wake of such reported violence. Higgins spoke of her pain upon realising that, when it came to what happened, “the only thing that … made people care about it was where it happened and who it was connected to.”
It’s really very odd to think that men can’t care about terrible things that happen to women unless they’re reminded of the very few women they actually give a shit about. Is it really that impossible for men to realize that women are people exactly as men are? That we aren’t some weird other kind of human with no emotions, no fears, no ability to feel pain, no real significance of any kind? Surely it’s not.
Manne then points out that daughter is a bad choice because daughters used to be seen as literally the property of their fathers.
It is long past overdue to conceive of female victims as people in their own right, with human rights, rather than as some man’s somebody – his wife, mother, sister, daughter, and so on – and as mattering because of that. She is her own person, and a person is – or ought to be – inviolable by others’ acts of sexual violence.
Well said. Thank you.
Oh but wait, there’s more.
Thirdly, and finally, there is something misbegotten about the idea of rape as a woman’s issue in this context whatsoever. True, girls and women are disproportionately likely to be rape victims, as compared with their male counterparts, and that surely matters in terms of how we address the issue as a society. But rape is also routinely committed against boys, men, and non-binary people.
The new improved feminism strikes again.
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10 responses to “Rape is not a women’s issue”
Men:
Don’t just care about rape because of your daughter.
Don’t just care about rape because of your wife.
Don’t just care about rape because it’s connected to you.
Remember, men can be raped, too.
That last quote sounds exactly like “but all/white/blue lives matter”
How to muddy an issue.
In the end, I DO think that “you wouldn’t want your daughter/sister/wife/mother/grandmother to be treated that way” really IS symptomatic of how individual women aren’t valued in their own right.
I think it is mitigated by the fact that sometimes the same thing is done for things done to men: Dead soldiers are somebody’s son. Men brought low by some sort of corrupt tyranny are “humiliated fathers,” etc.
Finally, if, in practical terms, making some dipshit see the wider implications of their actions helps to alleviate a problem, then maybe keep on that line of argument (while also criticizing it).
I don’t pretend to be the final word on this subject.
‘Is it really that impossible for men to realize that women are people exactly as men are?’ Unfortunately, the more experience I have and the more I read and hear the more I realise how disturbingly often this is the case.
Here is an excerpt from an excellent opinion piece in today’s Adelaide Advertiser. Tory starts off by detailing her own experiences as a young journalist on her first night in Canberra. Then she gets to the meat of Scotty from Marketing’s “argument”.
The penultimate sentence is the critical part of Tory’s case.
Each time there is a case like this various people rush into victim blaming. I keep saying that there is only one word to consider in these cases – consent.
An alternate theory is that some men always wonder if a woman is lying, exaggerating, sent off the “wrong signals,” or did something to deserve it. But if they think about how it could have happened to a woman they trust, then they’ll trust this woman, too.
To return to Ophelia’s point
Girls and women are not disproportionately likely to be rape victims, they are disproportionately rape victims.
It is true that not all rape victims are women, as a disproportionately small number of men and boys are raped.
There is one very common factor in both scenarios, and that is it is almost always a man who does the raping.
Yeah, I hate this one. My husband is not a parent; he never had children, either daughters or sons. He doesn’t need to ask me, or think of me to realize why rape is bad. But then, he considers women people.
Floating a theory here on the generalised trouble by men (not all men of course) to empathise with women (not all women, since the ones raped by monsters can be readily sympathised with) on the matter of rape.
I think men who have this trouble have never contemplated being violated against their will in such a fashion, especially by someone they know (in this case it was the woman’s colleague from work), and so, not viewing it as a clear attack or power imbalance, they view it as a misunderstanding, miscommunication, a matter of perspective, or even a lie to damage a reputation or career to gain a competitive advantage. They contemplate the times when they themselves have been misunderstood, and then empathise with the man, who was surely misunderstood, proceeding in error, and not a rapist at all.
I think such men think there are two kinds of rapes: clear cut attacks, perpetrated by monsters (and we would all recognise a monster if we saw/met one), and misunderstandings, which actually aren’t rapes at all, just unfortunate events that were no one’s fault, because those were good men, and it was a shame he misread her being passed out drunk on the bosses couch as an advance, rather than “leave me alone”, which was what she actually meant.
Most men (as demonstrated in the famous and often repeated experiment) do not fear being raped, unless they are sent to prison. So I think they struggle to empathise. Most women do fear being raped, and so can empathise.
Arcadia, another thing about men’s empathy is that they do not have to put up with constant hands all over them at work, elbows ever so subtly (not really) brushing against the breasts, people speaking to them with eyes never leaving their breasts, jokes that men think are complimentary and flattering but which demean and degrade and humiliate women…the constant barrage, coupled with failure to take our ideas seriously, talking over us, interrupting us, “forgetting” to email us when there is an important planning meeting, asking us to make coffee or bring cupcakes, and so on.
For most men I talk to, this whole thing seems to boil down to “Why do you overreact when a man puts his hand on your knee? Get over it.” This by a man who has never had to deal with having the man next to him put his hand on his ‘knee’ – which often then creeps higher up, up the thigh, until it becomes extremely uncomfortable.
And why should women ‘get over’ having a hand on their knee or an arm across their back? Women should have the right to work without unwanted contact unless it is required by the job, in which case if it’s unwanted, it might be best to find a different line of work.