I'm sorry, Helen, but these men are more 'ordinary' than you realize. I wrote about the Pelicot case a few weeks ago, just in time for having finished a great book by psychologist Dr. Timothy Buss: Bad Men: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment and Assault. The chapter on rape was particularly eye-opening and horrifying.
From my article:
"According to Bad Men, roughly one-third of men fantasize about raping a woman. One six-study summary put the number at 31%. How the studies phrase the question changes the numbers. The 30-odd-percentages come from those in which the question included the word ‘rape’; when the word is removed, and phrased as, “I fantasize about forcing a woman to have sex,” 54% admitted to it, and 62% said “it would be exciting to use force to subdue a woman.” Sexual coercion fantasies appear to be a lot more common than we know, and Buss notes that some of the men who entertain these fantasies claim they would commit rape if they believed they wouldn’t be caught or punished. That plays into the high number of rapists who commit the act while the woman is drugged or passed out from alcohol."
What is 'ordinary'? Is it every man on the street, or is it 90%? Or is it the roughly 65% who don't fantasize about raping? Okay, so this is just fantasy so it doesn't count, right? Well....
80% of rapes occur when the woman is drugged or unconscious. Sometimes men who aren't particularly prone to rape do exactly that. I used to know a woman in the States who told me a man approached her years later and said he was sorry he'd raped her at a party. She hadn't known. She had gotten drunk and went upstairs and passed out on a bed, then went home the next day. She didn't know what happened until the guy told her. He felt bad about what he did. Some women don't know they were raped until someone tells them....like Gisele Pelicot.
From the book: "Importantly, men who have these rape fantasies are also highly likely to report that they would actually commit rape if they knew that they would not be caught or punished. This is a critical finding, supporting the idea that thoughts often precede actions." And that telling women not to report because 'they won't be believed' perpetuates the ease with which a man can rape.
The 'Bad Men' book is all about the evolutionary sexual strategies men have devised to get or force women to have sex with them, and the counter-strategies women devise to ever-thwart them. The men who availed themselves of Dominique Pelicot's offer likely weren't traditional rapists; esp those repeat offenders you referenced who showed up again and again in police files; a small handful of men account for MOST of the rapes out there - and they get away with it over and over again because every woman who doesn't hold them accountable teaches them they can get away with it. And they're right.
Those are the cold, hard facts of not reporting. Rape persists because *women* allow it, not men.
As for JK Rowling's comment re raped women and 'better choices', she's right, it's dicey esp for a woman of Pelicot's generation to suggest she should have made 'better choices'. Well, Pelicot is only ten years older than I, raised in a different era when mothers and other female relatives didn't know or understand how to teach their daughters to protect themselves against male sexual appetites and abuse. Chances are very good the red warning flags were all around Dominique Pelicot and Gisele was simply too naive or uninformed to recognize them. (I wrote a whole article about a woman raped by a boyfriend who worshipped Andrew Tate). My own personal take on this is that instead of blaming these women for missing the red flags, let's educate ourselves and young women/girls on what those red flags are so they can avoid them. So much more is known now about that than when the Pelicots first got married.
We don't need to *blame* women for their rapes and abuse - but we can do our own 'post-mortems' on their events and figure out what happened and how *we* can avoid it. Sometimes the mistakes they made were avoidable, and sometimes they weren't--which indicates not a stupid woman, but a previously unidentified gap in OUR knowledge of what a determined predator can do.
The idea that men are fundamentally more evil than women is at bottom as silly and unsophisticated as “boys have cooties”! You really ought to read outside the rad-fem bubble.
I don't think you know too much about the 'rad-fem' bubble. The Buss book was hardly that. A 'rad-fem' wouldn't argue that women perpetuate rape by not reporting it, and elsewhere I've argued that even if he's acquitted, or the case thrown out, she still puts him through some real terror of potential jail and what might happen to him there. Which might make him think twice about doing it again.
I don’t know, I never looked into it much. I do know they’re common. The thing is, in fantasy you’re always in control, with a real rape you’re not. You can fantasize about some handsome lover ‘forcing’ himself on you but it’s not really rape, she really wants it, which is the premise of all those bodice-ripper novels. I don’t know how men’s rape fantasies go, whether they’d dig a lot of screaming and real fear, or whether she comes 800 times and screams til she’s hoarse from the pleasure or not.
How can you sit there with a straight face repeating that 1/3 of men endorse “I fantasize about raping a woman,” in those words? Absolutely nuts. The source: one study of 100 guys 40 years ago.
Nor, of course, are 80% of rapes on the unconscious/incapacitated. Nor are men who aren’t prone to rape doing any raping. No idea what source you’re using for those claims.
And no way some dude actually apologized years later for raping a woman he knew was completely passed out and wouldn’t remember…. That’s just too much.
How do you know that many don't fantasize about rape? I don't find it hard to believe. And I know not all of them would do it but apparently some would (like when she's passed out at a party). You sure seem to think you know about rape. Where did you get *your* sources? I was quoting the findings in the book. And why would someone lie about finding out years later she was raped by a guy with an apology? Said individual isn't an activist.
As a man with rape fantasies, I would say that they’re not really all that different from all other kinds of sexual fantasies. To me, a sexual fantasy is basically a sort of narrative that establishes why this particular woman is sexually available to me. Like the plot of a porn movie. The appeal is not the coercion itself. The coercion is just a plot device that explains how I get to fuck this girl who is not otherwise available to me.
Now that I think about it, the male rape fantasy solves exactly the same problem as the female rape fantasy that of missing female sexual availability. It’s the same thing, just from the male perspective.
I ask, curiously rather than judgementally, how the woman reacts to your 'coercion' in the fantasy. Does she 'actually want it'? Realize she likes it after it starts? Or just goes along with it?
I would imagine for someone who doesn't have a hatred for women (and I'm not suggesting you do), the 'rape fantasy' might be less horrific than women might think. After all, we are all probably stars in someone else's fantasy, and it would horrify us to think of that presumably unappealing person fantasizing about having sex with us, whether he sees us as an unwilling victim (the hostile version) or someone who happily complies (the non-hostile version).
I believe you when say that you ask curiously rather than judgmentally. In that spirit I’ll try to answer as honestly as I can:
Frankly, and realize this must sound disturbing, I don’t really consider her mental state at all. In the fantasy, she is not a fully realized person. She is more like a figure in a scene constructed around my gratification. If I force myself to consider what she’d be feeling, it’s nothing good. But her inner experience isn’t what the fantasy is about.
Okay, I can buy that, actually. It sort of sounds bad but it really applies to all fantasies. No one’s hurt if the object of your affections doesn’t know what s/he’s doing with you at night, lol. I think I would be very disturbed if someone I didn’t like at all (never mind what he looks like, let’s just say he’s a real asshole and I can’t stand him) I learned was fantasizing about working his way through the Kama Sutra with me. I’d be utterly grossed out. But, probably some of the people I’ve fantasized about would be the same if they knew what they were doing with me lol. Although in my mental state, whoever he is, he’s totally digging me. Because I’m THAT HOT in my head :)
You missed the point. You understand, it seems, that women can fantasize about rape without actually wanting to be raped. But when you learn that men fantasize about rape, you forget what you knew just a second ago and believe instead that men who fantasy about rape actually want to commit rape.
That's not what I said. I said that men do fantasize about rape but only *some* claimed they would do it if they thought they could get away with it. Not that they're actively looking to rape. In fact, the book claimed that the *vast* majority of rapes are committed by a small number of serial rapists. So it would seem that (I'm assuming) men who fantasize about rape mostly wouldn't do it, and a few think they might if they had an opportunity to do it and get away with it.
What I'm actually curious about is in male fantasy rapes--let's say the ones who say they would never rape in real life--how they frame it in their mind. Because, as I said before, women's rape fantasies are always within their control. And they're not, AFAIK, fantasizing that the guy hates women and wants to make her suffer. He's so overwhelmed by his love for her or her great beauty or her lush boobs or whatever that he just takes her, and she resists--but just enough so she can argue that she didn't really want it when she did.
In fact, in the '70s I used to read Ann Landers and Dear Abby and they periodically addressed the situation of sexually repressed girls and young women--particularly Catholic girls--who sort of went along with a guy who was pressuring them for sex and argued to themselves it wasn't her fault because he was pushing her. They didn't, it seem, feel actually raped--they wanted to have sex but since 'good girls don't', they allowed themselves to be pushed just enough to maintain that identity.
So I wonder if there's a way men frame it in their minds that it's not a 'real rape' the way bodice rippers and common female fantasies have it. I don't know. It's okay if you don't either. I'm throwing it out there for anyone who cares to comment.
I too would like to hear some men answer this question. In fact, I wonder if it’s covered in the Hite Report on Male Sexuality. If you haven’t read that, you may want to check it out. It’s old, but a lot of the answers are pretty timeless (for example, the weird commonality in wet dreams of a sense of reaching for the object of desire right before orgasm).
Thanks for your great rebuttals here. Rebutter on this subject can be a lonely job.
I read the Shere Hite's work over the years. Are you referring to the original one from the '70s? That might have been the one I found at my parents' house and borrowed. Hite wrote other books updating the information over the years (not revising the original one, but new books about what was different or understood now). They were quite interesting. The most recent one I read was, I think from the '90s, and was really about the baby boomers (I, an early Xer, maybe even a 'cusper' straddling the transition from Boom to X) found it interesting, and stuff to think about for my future (I was in my thirties) and definitely different from the earlier book. I also read Passages, not one of hers but a big sellers in the '70s and '80s, I think, along similar lines, less about sex, more about the transitions of decades, in which one's life cycle changes tended to occur shortly after having a birthday ending in a 0. Made me realize I wasn't weird, as I'd feared, just normal ;)
To be fair, I once read that a large proportion of women have also reported rape fantasies. There is a huge gap between a role playing fantasy and real life.
True, and the difference is that in rape fantasies she really wants the guy, but is prohibited, usually by social strictures, for some reason. It's the most common trope in bodice-ripper romance novels. The difference is that in fantasy, *she* controls the action and he never does or says anything she doesn't want him to. I'm not sure how it works in male rape fantasies--whether they want her to suffer and feel degraded, or simply 'prove' to her that she can enjoy it, because in his fantasy she knows she wants it.
The diff here is, for some fantasy crosses over into a desire to try it in real life. Whether they act on it or not, given the opportunity?
I would guess that it works all kinds of ways for men—and for women. Because it’s fantasy. You seem to think that men who fantasize about the woman suffering and being degraded, actually want to inflict that on an unwilling woman in real life. You also seem to think that no women fantasize about suffering and being degraded. I heard tell of a man in the kink scene who would throw kink parties at his house. On feature was a mud pit in the back yard called the ‘pig hole,’ as in “go get in the pig hole.” These parties also featured heavy impact play to the point of heavy bruising and bleeding. From what I heard, this fellow was quite popular with the ladies.
You guys are misunderstanding what I said. I was actually horrified to think that 31% fantasize about 'raping', 'forcing a woman to have sex', or 'sexual coercion' (all different ways of saying the same thing) and some said they would do it, they think if they could. Let's get it straight, because I'm tired of addressing this point. What shocked me is the 31% number - makes me wonder if 31% of the men I've known in my life ever fantasized about raping *me*.
I will admit I have hidden opinions about people in the kink scene. I don't judge them for their kinks, and I'm well aware of safe kink play and as long as it's not illegal (consenting adults, no underage kids, no animals) have at it. I wonder about the women who go in for degradation, and abuse, the 'pig hole', and the 'gang rape room' (which I saw once at a Toronto sex club, although it was empty at the time). I suspect a lot of these women have trauma issues they're working out. I may be wrong, and some may find that offensive, but it seems to be true about women who work quite enthusiastically in sex work or the porno biz. Even male observers have commented that they all seemed to have violent backstories.
I understand that you’re shocked about the 31% number. But I think the percentage of women who fantasize about some kind of non-consensual or other undesirable-in-real-life scenario is at least that high. I bet you have no trouble understanding that the fact that women fantasize about such things doesn’t mean they really want it to happen. But you seem to have trouble making the same leap for men: men fantasize about things they don’t want to actually do, too. Thinking men *do* want to do everything they fantasize about is exactly like thinking women who fantasize about rape actually want to be raped. Exactly the same.
Some feminist writing seems to come from the perspective of “we innocent women are trapped on the planet with men who want to dominate and do horrible things to us.” And I can see why. But I think a fairer perspective is that human beings—both sexes—are in an elaborate dance in which desire, care, power, vulnerability, all figure. Women are often drawn to men they see as strong and able to protect them. Women are also to some extent drawn to men with status and power and some ability to dominate. One way to know that your man is strong is to feel that he’s stronger than *you.* Sometimes women push and test their men to see if their men have the strength to stand up. Women don’t want a partner who overpowers them…but many wouldn’t be happy with a partner they felt *couldn’t* overpower them.
So power, dominance, and vulnerability are woven in to desire (to a degree that varies from person to person). Some people find it exciting to play with these things explicitly, via kink. (And often in a way that goes against the traditional paradigm, e.g., male submissives.)
And for some people, these dynamics play out in an unhealthy way, e.g., women who seek out abusive men or who write love letters to murderers. Particularly when these desires are paired with sociopathy, we get violent sex crimes.
But there is no version of human sexuality consistent with us still being human beings in which sex always looks like a Bay Area cuddle party or involves a trail of rose petals to the bathtub.
Oh, I know women aren't less evil than men. We express it differently, especially violent tendencies. There's evidence now that there are more female serial killers than we know, because they have be more 'passive' - esp if they kill males. Like that Australian woman guilty of murdering her relatives with poison mushrooms. Or women in caring industries who bump off babies, old people, or other patients by altering their care or giving them something that kills them. Women, I believe, have evolved to be highly manipulative and devious in an effort to get the resources they needed or wanted for themselves and their children. So, we may be more devious in how we kill or harm others.
I've read a few good books on violent women, women in prison and how they treat each other, and the darker side of femininity. I know personally how nasty, devious, underhanded, manipulative, and downright evil women can be.
Lots of men also fantasize about killing their boss. The overwhelming majority do not. Whether or not someone fantasizes about antisocial behavior is not a reliable guide to whether or not they will actually do it.
In some cases fantasies might even be preventative, I recall reading cases about serial killers who were able to suppress their urge to kill with violent fantasies, allowing them to go longer between murders and reducing their total number of victims. It seems likely that there are other people who can use violent fantasies as a complete substitute and not harm anyone at all (of course there is no way to know that for sure since such people, if they exist, are never arrested)
True. I've heard about people like that. The only person *I* ever fantasized about killing was my worst bully in high school. Good thing it was the '70s and guns weren't as common in households as they are now. I probably wouldn't have done it anyway but I used to think that if I was in a room with him and a gun and I knew no one knew where we were or were together, that i could shoot him and do the world a big favor by ridding of it one more asshole who I believed would never change. (Spoiler alert: He did eventually grow up.)
Interesting. Yeah, it's not every man's bag, thankfully. Sharon certainly sounded like she had mental health issues. That pretty much describes every consensual porn actress, ever.
Since Sharon is the only porn actress with whom I have ever been personally acquainted, I can't make any generalizations.
Sharon was clearly troubled. The events described in the chapter of the story that follows the one you read (linked at the bottom) clearly portray Sharon's mental condition.
I never learned the circumstances that led her to become an exotic dancer.
Circumstances ultimately led to us parting ways, but after all these years, I still remember her fondly.
I enjoyed that book, and everything else Buss has published, but he clearly was only focused on one side of the game in this one. Many men invest decades of resources, protection, and status into offspring that are not genetically theirs because of a woman's deception. There isn't a whole lot of things a human could do to another that are worse than that.
It is one-sided, but hey, the book is called Bad Man, not Bad People. There are plenty of books about Bad Women too. I've read some of those too. What I disliked most about the book was that Bad Men was in giant block letters across the cover of the book, and when I read it on the subway I had to fold the left half of the book back so that, when reading it on the subway, people didn't think I was reading some misogynist victim feminist rad-fem diatribe about *all* men.
Lol! Good point. I really do enjoy Buss' work. My favorite, because it overlaps my work somewhat, is The Murderer Next Door. Turns out almost all murder is over mate competition.
Oh yeah, the best way to get murdered is via a male partner--and guess what, that stands for transwomen too. While some has been allegedly motivated by 'gay panic' or 'trans panic', the so-called 'trans genocide' you hear about is pretty much a transactivist fantasy. Transwomen are primarily murdered by their male partners, just like women. Only a few are murdered by strangers, with a higher risk if one is involved in prostitution (selling).
I feel like people don’t appreciate the reach of the internet. Through the internet you could find scores of people willing to do things that only a small fraction of people would do in the real world.
I remember the case of the guy convicted of a cannibalistic murder in Germany after he found, killed, and cannibalized another man on the internet was willing to be killed and eaten by him. Obviously that is even more extreme, but it tells you the range of human capacities that the power of the internet can reach.
Don’t forget the “forgotten men” in this case. Many men were involved in investigating the case, arresting the offenders, and bringing them to justice. But I’ve not seen anyone highlight them as positive examples or thank them
Those who pathologise ordinary men and male culture enable men with *actual* pathologies to remain under-researched, undetected and untreated - and thereby contribute to the problem.
"These rapists shared a particular prediliction for sexually offending against unconscious women and they were able to find others who shared their precise twisted fantasies and conspire to commit their crimes using social media forums." The internet enables very unusual people with very unusual interests to gather together in unusual places.
I see a problem with the secure database of non convicted suspects, particularly if the approach would be "bring the victim statements together making a successful prosecution much more likely", because I'm afraid such an approach would be inherently prone to all sorts of statistical fallacies (texas sharpshooter, prosecutor's fallacy, etc) and so it would ultimately lead to a violation of presumption of innocence.
But the issue is very important so we should reflect on what could be done here.
I don't want to drag you into hot topics of contemporary debate, but consider the case of the nurse Lucia De Berk, who was wrongfully convicted of murdering her patients because of what turned out to be coincidences, and was later aquitted.
There is an inherent conflict of interests here: from the alleged perpetrator point of view, as liberals, in order to avoid miscarriages of justice we should set an high bar on what degree of certainty is needed before convicting; but from the point of view of the potential victims we should set a low bar of certainty before enforcing more protective measures.
So I think there is a real discussion to be had on how to make these opposite requisites cohexist, possibly enforcing early strong protective measures while avoiding the risk of wrong convictions.
Hi Helen, I really devoured your article. A few years ago before Elon took over Twitter, I engaged in a debate about “rape culture” online. I quickly realized that men and women were interpreting the term very differently. Men were indignant and cited anti-rape/sexual assault laws to prove rape-culture didn’t exist. But women were talking more about something they’d picked up from sexist jokes and cartoons of male force that always had a bro’ yuk-yuk response, even from regular guys. And as someone has already mentioned, I know of at least one survey of college men that showed that a good 35% -ish admitted (in theory) they’d rape a girl if they had a guarantee they would get away with it. I like men a lot! Maybe too much 🤭 But I never fool myself that perhaps one out of 3 or 4 has rape fantasies. And yes, evolutionary sciences are trying to sort this out.
I participated in similar conversations. Sometimes I’d respond to the claim that at least one in four women are sexually assaulted at college—which would make U.S. colleges the locus of an unprecedented wave of violent crime, worse than Compton during the crack wars—by suggesting we treat it like a crime wave: undercover officers at parties, cameras and panic buttons everywhere, police patrolling dorm hallways, etc. These suggestions were met with derision. From which I concluded that feminists don’t actually believe there is an epidemic of violent crime in campus. They just want frat guys to be more polite.
I can say with certainty the 1-in-4 statistic is false. Christina Hoff Sommers for example, has shown it nhas no basis. I guess most women know that now, but it doesn't negate my point about how men and women understand the term "rape culture". I don't understand what you mean by your last sentence.
What I mean is, although the stated complaint is about a rate of sexual assault that if real would signify a major crime wave, the actual concern is about what they see as “entitled” behavior by “privileged” guys, like leveraging status and alcohol to have sex with a first-year girl and then not calling her, that kind of thing. (And no, consenting to sex while intoxicated isn’t sexual assault unless you’re “incapacitated” by alcohol in most states afaik.)
I *think* I know what you’re saying, but not sure. I’d be curious to know how campus relationships are going now. From what I’m hearing, young women are backing off from the term “feminist” these days. To be honest I don’t blame them.
All valuable and consideration-worthy ideas. One concept I never see addressed (and which will most assuredly be met with derision and vitriol, but I believe is of utmost importance) is holding mothers accountable for bringing or allowing predators into their children’s lives and homes as well as for disregarding or blaming their children’s accounts of sexual abuse. In literally every case I personally know of as well as many of the cases I’ve read about, mothers either did not believe their children or blamed their children when confronted with the abuse. This is an unpleasant but very real reality for most children and mothers should be morally and legally held to account for their roles in this inexcusable reality.
How do you see that working 'legally'? You don't sound like you have much understanding of DV. Why would we hold women responsible for men's crimes - isn't that just taking the heat off the men responsible?
I see it working legally the same way proving sexual assault and domestic violence work legally…through witness testimony, medical records, and, if possible, audio/video recordings. The same ways fathers work through family courts to protect their children when they become aware their children’s mothers are allowing sexual predators access to their children. The same ways CPS protects children when they become aware mothers are allowing sexual predators access to children. The same way school counselors, family members, friends, and neighbors protect children when they become aware mothers are allowing sexual predators access to children. By speaking up!
I am really sorry but these men are the majority. I am currently trapped in the sex industry as a camgirl and fetish film creator and 70% of the punters are married or in long term relationships and they are into the most disgusting, unfathomable fetishists, have rampant porn addiction or random sexual encounters on Grindr (closeted homosexuals) and their wives have no idea.
I'm sorry, Helen, but these men are more 'ordinary' than you realize. I wrote about the Pelicot case a few weeks ago, just in time for having finished a great book by psychologist Dr. Timothy Buss: Bad Men: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment and Assault. The chapter on rape was particularly eye-opening and horrifying.
From my article:
"According to Bad Men, roughly one-third of men fantasize about raping a woman. One six-study summary put the number at 31%. How the studies phrase the question changes the numbers. The 30-odd-percentages come from those in which the question included the word ‘rape’; when the word is removed, and phrased as, “I fantasize about forcing a woman to have sex,” 54% admitted to it, and 62% said “it would be exciting to use force to subdue a woman.” Sexual coercion fantasies appear to be a lot more common than we know, and Buss notes that some of the men who entertain these fantasies claim they would commit rape if they believed they wouldn’t be caught or punished. That plays into the high number of rapists who commit the act while the woman is drugged or passed out from alcohol."
What is 'ordinary'? Is it every man on the street, or is it 90%? Or is it the roughly 65% who don't fantasize about raping? Okay, so this is just fantasy so it doesn't count, right? Well....
80% of rapes occur when the woman is drugged or unconscious. Sometimes men who aren't particularly prone to rape do exactly that. I used to know a woman in the States who told me a man approached her years later and said he was sorry he'd raped her at a party. She hadn't known. She had gotten drunk and went upstairs and passed out on a bed, then went home the next day. She didn't know what happened until the guy told her. He felt bad about what he did. Some women don't know they were raped until someone tells them....like Gisele Pelicot.
From the book: "Importantly, men who have these rape fantasies are also highly likely to report that they would actually commit rape if they knew that they would not be caught or punished. This is a critical finding, supporting the idea that thoughts often precede actions." And that telling women not to report because 'they won't be believed' perpetuates the ease with which a man can rape.
The 'Bad Men' book is all about the evolutionary sexual strategies men have devised to get or force women to have sex with them, and the counter-strategies women devise to ever-thwart them. The men who availed themselves of Dominique Pelicot's offer likely weren't traditional rapists; esp those repeat offenders you referenced who showed up again and again in police files; a small handful of men account for MOST of the rapes out there - and they get away with it over and over again because every woman who doesn't hold them accountable teaches them they can get away with it. And they're right.
Those are the cold, hard facts of not reporting. Rape persists because *women* allow it, not men.
As for JK Rowling's comment re raped women and 'better choices', she's right, it's dicey esp for a woman of Pelicot's generation to suggest she should have made 'better choices'. Well, Pelicot is only ten years older than I, raised in a different era when mothers and other female relatives didn't know or understand how to teach their daughters to protect themselves against male sexual appetites and abuse. Chances are very good the red warning flags were all around Dominique Pelicot and Gisele was simply too naive or uninformed to recognize them. (I wrote a whole article about a woman raped by a boyfriend who worshipped Andrew Tate). My own personal take on this is that instead of blaming these women for missing the red flags, let's educate ourselves and young women/girls on what those red flags are so they can avoid them. So much more is known now about that than when the Pelicots first got married.
We don't need to *blame* women for their rapes and abuse - but we can do our own 'post-mortems' on their events and figure out what happened and how *we* can avoid it. Sometimes the mistakes they made were avoidable, and sometimes they weren't--which indicates not a stupid woman, but a previously unidentified gap in OUR knowledge of what a determined predator can do.
The idea that men are fundamentally more evil than women is at bottom as silly and unsophisticated as “boys have cooties”! You really ought to read outside the rad-fem bubble.
I don't think you know too much about the 'rad-fem' bubble. The Buss book was hardly that. A 'rad-fem' wouldn't argue that women perpetuate rape by not reporting it, and elsewhere I've argued that even if he's acquitted, or the case thrown out, she still puts him through some real terror of potential jail and what might happen to him there. Which might make him think twice about doing it again.
I would be very interested in knowing what the statistics show about the number of women who have rape fantasies?
I don’t know, I never looked into it much. I do know they’re common. The thing is, in fantasy you’re always in control, with a real rape you’re not. You can fantasize about some handsome lover ‘forcing’ himself on you but it’s not really rape, she really wants it, which is the premise of all those bodice-ripper novels. I don’t know how men’s rape fantasies go, whether they’d dig a lot of screaming and real fear, or whether she comes 800 times and screams til she’s hoarse from the pleasure or not.
Men’s fantasies are just fantasies too.
How can you sit there with a straight face repeating that 1/3 of men endorse “I fantasize about raping a woman,” in those words? Absolutely nuts. The source: one study of 100 guys 40 years ago.
Nor, of course, are 80% of rapes on the unconscious/incapacitated. Nor are men who aren’t prone to rape doing any raping. No idea what source you’re using for those claims.
And no way some dude actually apologized years later for raping a woman he knew was completely passed out and wouldn’t remember…. That’s just too much.
How do you know that many don't fantasize about rape? I don't find it hard to believe. And I know not all of them would do it but apparently some would (like when she's passed out at a party). You sure seem to think you know about rape. Where did you get *your* sources? I was quoting the findings in the book. And why would someone lie about finding out years later she was raped by a guy with an apology? Said individual isn't an activist.
Men's fantasy is consent, duh.
Not sure what your point is here.
As a man with rape fantasies, I would say that they’re not really all that different from all other kinds of sexual fantasies. To me, a sexual fantasy is basically a sort of narrative that establishes why this particular woman is sexually available to me. Like the plot of a porn movie. The appeal is not the coercion itself. The coercion is just a plot device that explains how I get to fuck this girl who is not otherwise available to me.
Now that I think about it, the male rape fantasy solves exactly the same problem as the female rape fantasy that of missing female sexual availability. It’s the same thing, just from the male perspective.
I ask, curiously rather than judgementally, how the woman reacts to your 'coercion' in the fantasy. Does she 'actually want it'? Realize she likes it after it starts? Or just goes along with it?
I would imagine for someone who doesn't have a hatred for women (and I'm not suggesting you do), the 'rape fantasy' might be less horrific than women might think. After all, we are all probably stars in someone else's fantasy, and it would horrify us to think of that presumably unappealing person fantasizing about having sex with us, whether he sees us as an unwilling victim (the hostile version) or someone who happily complies (the non-hostile version).
I believe you when say that you ask curiously rather than judgmentally. In that spirit I’ll try to answer as honestly as I can:
Frankly, and realize this must sound disturbing, I don’t really consider her mental state at all. In the fantasy, she is not a fully realized person. She is more like a figure in a scene constructed around my gratification. If I force myself to consider what she’d be feeling, it’s nothing good. But her inner experience isn’t what the fantasy is about.
Okay, I can buy that, actually. It sort of sounds bad but it really applies to all fantasies. No one’s hurt if the object of your affections doesn’t know what s/he’s doing with you at night, lol. I think I would be very disturbed if someone I didn’t like at all (never mind what he looks like, let’s just say he’s a real asshole and I can’t stand him) I learned was fantasizing about working his way through the Kama Sutra with me. I’d be utterly grossed out. But, probably some of the people I’ve fantasized about would be the same if they knew what they were doing with me lol. Although in my mental state, whoever he is, he’s totally digging me. Because I’m THAT HOT in my head :)
You missed the point. You understand, it seems, that women can fantasize about rape without actually wanting to be raped. But when you learn that men fantasize about rape, you forget what you knew just a second ago and believe instead that men who fantasy about rape actually want to commit rape.
That's not what I said. I said that men do fantasize about rape but only *some* claimed they would do it if they thought they could get away with it. Not that they're actively looking to rape. In fact, the book claimed that the *vast* majority of rapes are committed by a small number of serial rapists. So it would seem that (I'm assuming) men who fantasize about rape mostly wouldn't do it, and a few think they might if they had an opportunity to do it and get away with it.
What I'm actually curious about is in male fantasy rapes--let's say the ones who say they would never rape in real life--how they frame it in their mind. Because, as I said before, women's rape fantasies are always within their control. And they're not, AFAIK, fantasizing that the guy hates women and wants to make her suffer. He's so overwhelmed by his love for her or her great beauty or her lush boobs or whatever that he just takes her, and she resists--but just enough so she can argue that she didn't really want it when she did.
In fact, in the '70s I used to read Ann Landers and Dear Abby and they periodically addressed the situation of sexually repressed girls and young women--particularly Catholic girls--who sort of went along with a guy who was pressuring them for sex and argued to themselves it wasn't her fault because he was pushing her. They didn't, it seem, feel actually raped--they wanted to have sex but since 'good girls don't', they allowed themselves to be pushed just enough to maintain that identity.
So I wonder if there's a way men frame it in their minds that it's not a 'real rape' the way bodice rippers and common female fantasies have it. I don't know. It's okay if you don't either. I'm throwing it out there for anyone who cares to comment.
I too would like to hear some men answer this question. In fact, I wonder if it’s covered in the Hite Report on Male Sexuality. If you haven’t read that, you may want to check it out. It’s old, but a lot of the answers are pretty timeless (for example, the weird commonality in wet dreams of a sense of reaching for the object of desire right before orgasm).
Thanks for your great rebuttals here. Rebutter on this subject can be a lonely job.
I read the Shere Hite's work over the years. Are you referring to the original one from the '70s? That might have been the one I found at my parents' house and borrowed. Hite wrote other books updating the information over the years (not revising the original one, but new books about what was different or understood now). They were quite interesting. The most recent one I read was, I think from the '90s, and was really about the baby boomers (I, an early Xer, maybe even a 'cusper' straddling the transition from Boom to X) found it interesting, and stuff to think about for my future (I was in my thirties) and definitely different from the earlier book. I also read Passages, not one of hers but a big sellers in the '70s and '80s, I think, along similar lines, less about sex, more about the transitions of decades, in which one's life cycle changes tended to occur shortly after having a birthday ending in a 0. Made me realize I wasn't weird, as I'd feared, just normal ;)
To be fair, I once read that a large proportion of women have also reported rape fantasies. There is a huge gap between a role playing fantasy and real life.
True, and the difference is that in rape fantasies she really wants the guy, but is prohibited, usually by social strictures, for some reason. It's the most common trope in bodice-ripper romance novels. The difference is that in fantasy, *she* controls the action and he never does or says anything she doesn't want him to. I'm not sure how it works in male rape fantasies--whether they want her to suffer and feel degraded, or simply 'prove' to her that she can enjoy it, because in his fantasy she knows she wants it.
The diff here is, for some fantasy crosses over into a desire to try it in real life. Whether they act on it or not, given the opportunity?
I would guess that it works all kinds of ways for men—and for women. Because it’s fantasy. You seem to think that men who fantasize about the woman suffering and being degraded, actually want to inflict that on an unwilling woman in real life. You also seem to think that no women fantasize about suffering and being degraded. I heard tell of a man in the kink scene who would throw kink parties at his house. On feature was a mud pit in the back yard called the ‘pig hole,’ as in “go get in the pig hole.” These parties also featured heavy impact play to the point of heavy bruising and bleeding. From what I heard, this fellow was quite popular with the ladies.
You guys are misunderstanding what I said. I was actually horrified to think that 31% fantasize about 'raping', 'forcing a woman to have sex', or 'sexual coercion' (all different ways of saying the same thing) and some said they would do it, they think if they could. Let's get it straight, because I'm tired of addressing this point. What shocked me is the 31% number - makes me wonder if 31% of the men I've known in my life ever fantasized about raping *me*.
I will admit I have hidden opinions about people in the kink scene. I don't judge them for their kinks, and I'm well aware of safe kink play and as long as it's not illegal (consenting adults, no underage kids, no animals) have at it. I wonder about the women who go in for degradation, and abuse, the 'pig hole', and the 'gang rape room' (which I saw once at a Toronto sex club, although it was empty at the time). I suspect a lot of these women have trauma issues they're working out. I may be wrong, and some may find that offensive, but it seems to be true about women who work quite enthusiastically in sex work or the porno biz. Even male observers have commented that they all seemed to have violent backstories.
I understand that you’re shocked about the 31% number. But I think the percentage of women who fantasize about some kind of non-consensual or other undesirable-in-real-life scenario is at least that high. I bet you have no trouble understanding that the fact that women fantasize about such things doesn’t mean they really want it to happen. But you seem to have trouble making the same leap for men: men fantasize about things they don’t want to actually do, too. Thinking men *do* want to do everything they fantasize about is exactly like thinking women who fantasize about rape actually want to be raped. Exactly the same.
Some feminist writing seems to come from the perspective of “we innocent women are trapped on the planet with men who want to dominate and do horrible things to us.” And I can see why. But I think a fairer perspective is that human beings—both sexes—are in an elaborate dance in which desire, care, power, vulnerability, all figure. Women are often drawn to men they see as strong and able to protect them. Women are also to some extent drawn to men with status and power and some ability to dominate. One way to know that your man is strong is to feel that he’s stronger than *you.* Sometimes women push and test their men to see if their men have the strength to stand up. Women don’t want a partner who overpowers them…but many wouldn’t be happy with a partner they felt *couldn’t* overpower them.
So power, dominance, and vulnerability are woven in to desire (to a degree that varies from person to person). Some people find it exciting to play with these things explicitly, via kink. (And often in a way that goes against the traditional paradigm, e.g., male submissives.)
And for some people, these dynamics play out in an unhealthy way, e.g., women who seek out abusive men or who write love letters to murderers. Particularly when these desires are paired with sociopathy, we get violent sex crimes.
But there is no version of human sexuality consistent with us still being human beings in which sex always looks like a Bay Area cuddle party or involves a trail of rose petals to the bathtub.
Oh, I know women aren't less evil than men. We express it differently, especially violent tendencies. There's evidence now that there are more female serial killers than we know, because they have be more 'passive' - esp if they kill males. Like that Australian woman guilty of murdering her relatives with poison mushrooms. Or women in caring industries who bump off babies, old people, or other patients by altering their care or giving them something that kills them. Women, I believe, have evolved to be highly manipulative and devious in an effort to get the resources they needed or wanted for themselves and their children. So, we may be more devious in how we kill or harm others.
I've read a few good books on violent women, women in prison and how they treat each other, and the darker side of femininity. I know personally how nasty, devious, underhanded, manipulative, and downright evil women can be.
Lots of men also fantasize about killing their boss. The overwhelming majority do not. Whether or not someone fantasizes about antisocial behavior is not a reliable guide to whether or not they will actually do it.
In some cases fantasies might even be preventative, I recall reading cases about serial killers who were able to suppress their urge to kill with violent fantasies, allowing them to go longer between murders and reducing their total number of victims. It seems likely that there are other people who can use violent fantasies as a complete substitute and not harm anyone at all (of course there is no way to know that for sure since such people, if they exist, are never arrested)
True. I've heard about people like that. The only person *I* ever fantasized about killing was my worst bully in high school. Good thing it was the '70s and guns weren't as common in households as they are now. I probably wouldn't have done it anyway but I used to think that if I was in a room with him and a gun and I knew no one knew where we were or were together, that i could shoot him and do the world a big favor by ridding of it one more asshole who I believed would never change. (Spoiler alert: He did eventually grow up.)
Urgh. Since you're doing hard facts maybe you could include how many women fantasize about rape.
I forgot about something. I actually wrote about this years ago...
https://www.growsomelabia.com/post/when-is-rape-culture-totally-hot
Hmmm. Might be fodder for a future article.
Many men would find the prospect of sex with an unconscious woman unappealing. I am one of them.
Once, a woman invited me to have sex with her when she was drunk and unconscious. I declined because it did not appeal to me.
It is described in an episode that is part of a series of stories I published here on Substack:
https://estwald397.substack.com/p/sharon
Interesting. Yeah, it's not every man's bag, thankfully. Sharon certainly sounded like she had mental health issues. That pretty much describes every consensual porn actress, ever.
Since Sharon is the only porn actress with whom I have ever been personally acquainted, I can't make any generalizations.
Sharon was clearly troubled. The events described in the chapter of the story that follows the one you read (linked at the bottom) clearly portray Sharon's mental condition.
I never learned the circumstances that led her to become an exotic dancer.
Circumstances ultimately led to us parting ways, but after all these years, I still remember her fondly.
I enjoyed that book, and everything else Buss has published, but he clearly was only focused on one side of the game in this one. Many men invest decades of resources, protection, and status into offspring that are not genetically theirs because of a woman's deception. There isn't a whole lot of things a human could do to another that are worse than that.
It is one-sided, but hey, the book is called Bad Man, not Bad People. There are plenty of books about Bad Women too. I've read some of those too. What I disliked most about the book was that Bad Men was in giant block letters across the cover of the book, and when I read it on the subway I had to fold the left half of the book back so that, when reading it on the subway, people didn't think I was reading some misogynist victim feminist rad-fem diatribe about *all* men.
Lol! Good point. I really do enjoy Buss' work. My favorite, because it overlaps my work somewhat, is The Murderer Next Door. Turns out almost all murder is over mate competition.
Oh yeah, the best way to get murdered is via a male partner--and guess what, that stands for transwomen too. While some has been allegedly motivated by 'gay panic' or 'trans panic', the so-called 'trans genocide' you hear about is pretty much a transactivist fantasy. Transwomen are primarily murdered by their male partners, just like women. Only a few are murdered by strangers, with a higher risk if one is involved in prostitution (selling).
I feel like people don’t appreciate the reach of the internet. Through the internet you could find scores of people willing to do things that only a small fraction of people would do in the real world.
I remember the case of the guy convicted of a cannibalistic murder in Germany after he found, killed, and cannibalized another man on the internet was willing to be killed and eaten by him. Obviously that is even more extreme, but it tells you the range of human capacities that the power of the internet can reach.
Don’t forget the “forgotten men” in this case. Many men were involved in investigating the case, arresting the offenders, and bringing them to justice. But I’ve not seen anyone highlight them as positive examples or thank them
Excellent article, but let's go further.
Those who pathologise ordinary men and male culture enable men with *actual* pathologies to remain under-researched, undetected and untreated - and thereby contribute to the problem.
Blood on their hands.
"These rapists shared a particular prediliction for sexually offending against unconscious women and they were able to find others who shared their precise twisted fantasies and conspire to commit their crimes using social media forums." The internet enables very unusual people with very unusual interests to gather together in unusual places.
I see a problem with the secure database of non convicted suspects, particularly if the approach would be "bring the victim statements together making a successful prosecution much more likely", because I'm afraid such an approach would be inherently prone to all sorts of statistical fallacies (texas sharpshooter, prosecutor's fallacy, etc) and so it would ultimately lead to a violation of presumption of innocence.
But the issue is very important so we should reflect on what could be done here.
I don't want to drag you into hot topics of contemporary debate, but consider the case of the nurse Lucia De Berk, who was wrongfully convicted of murdering her patients because of what turned out to be coincidences, and was later aquitted.
There is an inherent conflict of interests here: from the alleged perpetrator point of view, as liberals, in order to avoid miscarriages of justice we should set an high bar on what degree of certainty is needed before convicting; but from the point of view of the potential victims we should set a low bar of certainty before enforcing more protective measures.
So I think there is a real discussion to be had on how to make these opposite requisites cohexist, possibly enforcing early strong protective measures while avoiding the risk of wrong convictions.
Thank you J. K. Rowling. One must make a conscious choice to become a monster.
Hi Helen, I really devoured your article. A few years ago before Elon took over Twitter, I engaged in a debate about “rape culture” online. I quickly realized that men and women were interpreting the term very differently. Men were indignant and cited anti-rape/sexual assault laws to prove rape-culture didn’t exist. But women were talking more about something they’d picked up from sexist jokes and cartoons of male force that always had a bro’ yuk-yuk response, even from regular guys. And as someone has already mentioned, I know of at least one survey of college men that showed that a good 35% -ish admitted (in theory) they’d rape a girl if they had a guarantee they would get away with it. I like men a lot! Maybe too much 🤭 But I never fool myself that perhaps one out of 3 or 4 has rape fantasies. And yes, evolutionary sciences are trying to sort this out.
I participated in similar conversations. Sometimes I’d respond to the claim that at least one in four women are sexually assaulted at college—which would make U.S. colleges the locus of an unprecedented wave of violent crime, worse than Compton during the crack wars—by suggesting we treat it like a crime wave: undercover officers at parties, cameras and panic buttons everywhere, police patrolling dorm hallways, etc. These suggestions were met with derision. From which I concluded that feminists don’t actually believe there is an epidemic of violent crime in campus. They just want frat guys to be more polite.
I can say with certainty the 1-in-4 statistic is false. Christina Hoff Sommers for example, has shown it nhas no basis. I guess most women know that now, but it doesn't negate my point about how men and women understand the term "rape culture". I don't understand what you mean by your last sentence.
What I mean is, although the stated complaint is about a rate of sexual assault that if real would signify a major crime wave, the actual concern is about what they see as “entitled” behavior by “privileged” guys, like leveraging status and alcohol to have sex with a first-year girl and then not calling her, that kind of thing. (And no, consenting to sex while intoxicated isn’t sexual assault unless you’re “incapacitated” by alcohol in most states afaik.)
I *think* I know what you’re saying, but not sure. I’d be curious to know how campus relationships are going now. From what I’m hearing, young women are backing off from the term “feminist” these days. To be honest I don’t blame them.
I don’t have a doctoral thesis about it, haha, just an idea/impression.
All valuable and consideration-worthy ideas. One concept I never see addressed (and which will most assuredly be met with derision and vitriol, but I believe is of utmost importance) is holding mothers accountable for bringing or allowing predators into their children’s lives and homes as well as for disregarding or blaming their children’s accounts of sexual abuse. In literally every case I personally know of as well as many of the cases I’ve read about, mothers either did not believe their children or blamed their children when confronted with the abuse. This is an unpleasant but very real reality for most children and mothers should be morally and legally held to account for their roles in this inexcusable reality.
How do you see that working 'legally'? You don't sound like you have much understanding of DV. Why would we hold women responsible for men's crimes - isn't that just taking the heat off the men responsible?
I see it working legally the same way proving sexual assault and domestic violence work legally…through witness testimony, medical records, and, if possible, audio/video recordings. The same ways fathers work through family courts to protect their children when they become aware their children’s mothers are allowing sexual predators access to their children. The same ways CPS protects children when they become aware mothers are allowing sexual predators access to children. The same way school counselors, family members, friends, and neighbors protect children when they become aware mothers are allowing sexual predators access to children. By speaking up!
I am really sorry but these men are the majority. I am currently trapped in the sex industry as a camgirl and fetish film creator and 70% of the punters are married or in long term relationships and they are into the most disgusting, unfathomable fetishists, have rampant porn addiction or random sexual encounters on Grindr (closeted homosexuals) and their wives have no idea.
Perpetrators of evil carefully observe the behavior of ordinary decent people and do their best to portray themselves as such.
You’re aware that women do too or nah?
Yes, finding them and shutting them down or using them to find offenders & then shutting them down is the way to go.