The Complications of Rape

Much in the same way that each mass shooting in the USA stirs up a "debate" about gun laws a recent rape case in Steubenville, Ohio has resulted in a similar outcry.  The case is actually complicated (in my opinion) and raises interesting, but often unpleasant, questions about what is, or is not, rape and what should be done about it.  I will be talking here about the rape of women by men, which is far from the only form, but is the one in the Steubenville case, and the most common form.


This is another of my posts in which not only will I perhaps have an opinion which others find appalling and offensive, but perhaps more troubling is that as a man I feel quite trepidatious about expressing any opinion at all on rape.  I can start with what should seem obvious, and I would hope that this is what people would assume of me.  Rape is a hideous crime, a traumatic experience that I equate with the trauma of war.  It isn't simply a single nasty event, it is something that you carry with you effecting trust, instilling fear, and altering behavior over the long term.

The difficulty about rape is that it all comes down to the consent of the possible victim.  The exact same behavior can be rape or not based upon the wishes of one person.  It therefore requires that a person, or persons, know the opinion of the other person. At the best of times this is problematic, and rape cases generally don't happen at the best of times.

Men have a clear responsibility not to rape women.  In my opinion if a women says that she doesn't want to have sex then having sex with her is rape. This seems pretty clear, but is it?  There are beliefs that when women say "No" they mean "Yes."  There are beliefs that when women say "No" they mean "No."  What this comes down to is again the central problem of what women want.  Putting aside the quite reasonable and common position that everyone has trouble knowing what they want, and often decide what they wanted after the fact, the question of what "No" means comes down to what women mean when they say "No."

The truth (from what I can tell from the only study on this precise question I can find) is that there is no defining answer.  From this study (and I remember another one that I cannot find) about 40% of undergraduate students have said at some point, "No" when they mean "Yes."  In the other study I remember that about one third of high school students had said, "No" when they meant "Yes."  presumably there is a slight increase in this number as women age (for at least the reason that there will be fewer virgins as women age.)  So the truth on what women mean when they say "No" is that it is very difficult to know the answer.  The two ends of the spectrum are both wrong, the actual answer is that it is complicated and therefore difficult for someone who wants to have sex with a woman to know.

How to solve this problem of what, "No" means?  There has to be an agreement within society about what this means.  This is problematic because men are genetically programmed to try to have sex, and women often have a wish to test a man's commitment, to require him to pass tests (as I was, although not with regard to sex) in order to sort out whether he'll stick around to help raise the children.  There is also the wish, which I addressed in my recent post on "Romance," for women to be thought of as faithful and demure and for men to be aggressive, even a little sociopathic.  These wishes are biological in nature, they won't do away.

However, there are all sorts of things that we want to do biologically that we have been capable of overcoming, and as a society we should be able to come to an agreement that while these desires are there they can be regulated through.  At the moment there is societal pressure for women to not appear promiscuous, even if they want to be, or simply want to appear that way.  There is a widespread belief (not only among men) that dressing like a "slut" means you "want it" and therefore it "isn't rape."  There is also societal pressure for men to act "like men", to sweep her off her feet, or cajole a woman into sex by overcoming her apparent rejection.  If you as a man don't try to get a woman to have sex with you you won't have much sex (I know this personally), but this isn't true the other way round.  These are OK, but there needs to be a manner in which this can be stopped before harm is done.  This manner should be pretty simple, agree that "No" always means "No."

For "No" to mean "No" then it requires that both sexes agree to this.  Men need to learn and accept that "No" always means "No" but women need to learn and accept that for this to work they always have to mean "No" when they say "No."  There is a responsibility for men to not rape women but there is also a responsibility for women to clearly define when they are giving consent and when they are not.  I understand that there is societal pressure against these two sides to the coin, that it is difficult for women to say a "no" clearly, none of us like to do so, but sometimes you need to do difficult things.  Saying that societal pressure makes it too hard for women to say "no" to rape I find demeaning towards women, just as saying that societal pressure makes men rape women is demeaning.

Further complication comes from what seems the eminently sensible position that if you don't have the ability to consent then sex is rape.  However, again this comes down to a problem of what is the line at which you don't have the ability to consent.  Is it a bit drunk?  Very drunk?  Passed out on the floor drunk?   Are these stages of intoxication with regard to rape different in a long-term relationship than in a new encounter.  Is what is consent based on the community in which you find yourself?  If consent was given several hours before intoxication and the woman then becomes too intoxicated to make a reasonable decision does the early consent still apply?  In the Steubenville case it seems pretty clear that the victim was incapable of consent, but her peers thought that getting that drunk at a party meant that you deserved it, that it was implicit consent.  No-one tried to stop it, or reported it, to her peers it wasn't really a crime (even though the word "rape" was used repeatedly.)

One of the widespread reactions to the trial is that men need to be educated to stop raping women.  I agree that this is so, but I also object to the inclusion in the group "men" that rape women.  I am not part of that group.  In fact, assuming 20% of women are raped, and assuming that there are men who commit multiple rapes (let's put the average at a conservative 2) then 90% of us don't rape women.  To say "men rape women" is like saying "women lie and steal."  I find it offensive.  It seems to me that with 90% of men not raping women the problem is not so much education, can you think of another form of education that has a 90% success rate?

I also want to point out that a not insignificant portion of the population are sociopaths, perhaps as high as 5%, you can't teach these people to not rape because it is wrong, only that the results of rape for them aren't worth it.  This requires both punishment, but also consistently high reporting of rape which is very different from the present situation (90% not reported.)  High reporting not only requires the education of women of the importance of reporting, but also a massively increased acceptance (even admiration, my stance) by society of that reporting.  A start would be getting across that contrary to myth, false accusations of rape are very low and no higher than for other crime.  When women say they have been raped, they almost certainly have been raped.

There has been outrage over the "light" sentencing (a year to five years in juvenile detention) and the comment by a cable news network that it was also the rapists' lives that were ruined.  The outrage was that punishment wasn't severe enough and that they deserved no sympathy.  People want these boys/men? to suffer without sympathy for their suffering.  More punishment doesn't make society better, and personally I have sympathy for any suffering regardless of the cause.  The criminals in this case probably will have their lives deeply harmed by their actions, and that sucks.  Does this mean I have less sympathy for the victim?  Quite the reverse.

The final point I wish to address is the idea that if you dress a certain way, take drugs in certain places, and act in certain ways you are not "asking for it."  Of course you are not asking to be raped (after all, if you are asking for it you cannot be raped) and these actions don't justify being raped (contrary to some Ohio high school students' opinions) but these actions do put out signals that you are more likely to want to have sex than if you behave otherwise.  Telling the world that you want to have sex increases your chances of getting raped, and pretty much everyone knows this.  Just like if you leave your car unlocked and the keys in the ignition you don't deserve your car to be stolen but it is much more likely to be stolen, dressing in a thong and bra, getting drunk and kissing multiple men at a frat party doesn't mean you deserve to be raped, but it is going to increase your chances of being raped.

In summary, rape is more complicated than "men shouldn't do it and need to be told that" and more complicated than "they want it."  What is consent is a deeply murky subject that means different things to different people.  The responsibility to not rape lies largely with men, but also with women who need to take charge of deciding for themselves whether they want to have sex and to clearly express what they want.  There needs to be a societal agreement that "No" always means "No" and this involves both sexes taking responsibility for sticking to the agreement.

What is Good Enough?

There will be nothing new in this post.  It's mostly for me to precisely put down what I am thinking and feeling and what I should do about it.

I am going through a pretty common part of my emotional life, a bit where I am not motivated to do very much, I just want to sit in the lovely sunshine with a beer, a bong hit, and a book, listening to reggae.  So far in my life this recipe has worked every time to make me happy.  When I think to myself as to what I really want to do with my life, it pretty much comes down to that.

However, I am a human raised in a culture of productivity.  I have been taught that I should do my part, not be a slacker, try to have goals and achieve them.  I have a duty to other people to "do my part" and so therefore not doing anything is immoral.  Laziness is wrong.

There are some people for whom what they want to with their life is be productive.  Good for them, but for me these two things are incompatible.  As a result I have a conflict between making myself happy right now and a sense of wrongness about that.

Well, what is my duty to my fellow man?  How productive do I need to be?  What is good enough?  I'll start of with the idea that if everyone helped other people more than they were helped (as far as is possible) then the world would be a pretty wonderful place.  Do I do that right now?  The help I receive is largely from my wife, and I help her too by doing what she hates to do, loving her, and trying to help her be happier.  While I believe her to be giving more than she is getting, she seems happy with the arrangement.  However, I also provided the funds to help mentor some children, protect some people from horrific diseases, and feed some people.  Overall it seems that I am helping more than I am being helped.

Furthermore, I worked in social work, which is almost by definition helping people.  I did that for something like fifteen years, and I was good at it.  After I quit I had problems of guilt, that there were people hurting because I wasn't working anymore.  My wife put forward the opinion that I had done my share for my life, that I had done more good than most people would do in their lifetimes, and that was good enough.

I can therefore conclude that overall in my life I have done more good than harm, and unless I start causing harm to people that should be pretty much true for the rest of my life.  Isn't that good enough?  It depends whether you think "good enough" is more than doing more good than harm, but rather doing the amount of good that you can do.  I could do much more good, give more to charity, volunteer, go back to work, clean the house.    The difference between the two "good enoughs" is the area in which I find myself when I feel guilt about just wanting to make myself happy.  Nobody, well perhaps almost nobody, does the greatest amount of good they could.  Doing more good than harm makes the world better.

I'm going with the idea that I am good enough, and so I'm going to make myself very happy right now.

The Direction of Religion in Modern Times

This post will be mostly about "western" religion, the Abrahamic religions, particularly Christianity because I know something about it.  The reasons for this consist of the subject of worldwide religion being too vast for even I to adequately simplify it, western religion being more familiar to everyone who reads this, and the fact that the future of western religion is in many ways the past and present of eastern religions.

By the end of the seventh century anno domini pretty much all of the area west of Persia was under the domination of Abrahamic, monotheistic religion.  These religions all had dogma and doctrine, specific beliefs and rules from God, that were written down.  If you didn't believe these things you were a tiny minority, a heretic, and usually subject to punishment (often death).  Religious belief came from on high.  There was some diversity in these religions, and within them, although far more diversity within Islam than Christianity (which was essentially divided between two very similar sects, the split originally coming from who should be the biggest boss) but none in the concept of rules and beliefs.

In the 16th century Martin Luther famously nailed his objections to some Catholic doctrine (specifically indulgences) and Protestantism was born.  The basic concept of Protestantism is that salvation comes through faith alone, and doctrine and dogma come from the Bible alone.  This was a challenge to religion coming from above, and advanced the idea of individualized religion (within the framework of the Bible).  In Protestantism your salvation is based on your direct relationship with God and needs no intermediary.  One century later the Enlightenment began, and I am sure that someone has written something clever about the connection.

In Islam such a level of individualism has never been formally realized (although the Ahmadiyya sect believes that God stills communicates to individuals) but there is actually quite some variation in beliefs, for example, within Sub-Saharan Africa there is a 39% difference in the number of Muslims who believe the Qu'ran should be read literally, between Cameroon and The Democratic Republic of the Congo.  The individuality of Islam (belief that there are multiple ways to interpret the Qu'ran, and it is not literal) is significantly higher on average in Europe and the USA.

The differences in Judaism are legendary, ranging from simply a cultural identity to fully fundamentalist.  From the outside it seems that, at least for centuries, Judaism has been about arguing with regard to beliefs as anything else.

The point of all of that is that there has been a general movement towards an individualization of belief, and it seems pretty clear to me that there is at least some connection between this and the movement towards political democratization.  This movement is increasing.

The extreme version of this individualization is the idea of "spiritual but not religious."  Generally such people claim that there is some sort of higher power or lifeforce, but differ widely in what this means.  In my experience a good number of such people find it impossible to actually define what this higher power is.  While polls differ, it seems that in the USA somewhere near 15%, and in the European Union about one quarter, describe themselves this way.

I think all signs point towards the belief of being "spiritual but not religious" to be a growing phenomenon, probably the fastest growing religious category (although Atheists are giving them a run for their money).  What this means is that people are leaving religions in which beliefs come from the top down, and deciding for themselves what they believe at a greater and greater rate.

Now, this is the bit where I will probably start offending people.  What does spiritual but not religious really mean?  It means that each person is making up what they believe, very much like people make up their own political beliefs.  Through evidence, personal experience, and what they would like to be true a position is taken.  The genius thing about this group is that the belief can be so vague that individuals themselves don't have to explain what they mean, even to themselves, and so find themselves almost immune to other criticism.

"What do you believe?"
"I believe there is something out there, some force or being"
"Well, what is that something, and what does it do?"
"I don't know, nobody can really know for sure, it is indescribable."

This is the purest expression of faith I have ever heard.  Not only is there a belief without evidence, but even the belief cannot be known.  Imagine such an approach with any other sort of subject, or knowledge.  Imagine such an approach to ethics, "I believe there is a right way for people to act, but it is impossible for anyone to say what that is."  It is essentially a "get out of jail free" card, the proponent is completely free from any challenge whatsoever that conventional religion must undergo.  You can't point to transubstantiation and ask whether people really think the cookie is the body of God.  It frees one to believe whatever one wants to without challenge.  It's a genius move, religious belief without needing any justification.

The "indescribable" approach is the best, and yet the silliest, one.  It kills at conception any ability to discuss such a concept, because the belief is that the concept can't be discussed.  A belief in something that you can't describe.  A belief in something without any qualities at all with which we are familiar.  How can you believe in something that has no qualities?  Surely a thing with no qualities is not even a thing?  

Still, spiritual but not religious must surely mean something?  It isn't entirely vacuous, surely?  well, we have a belief in a lifeforce, or higher power.  At a minimum a higher power has power, and more than us.  Basically it a magical belief, for if not then it must follow the rules of physics and then is merely material, or has no power at all, and something that doesn't do anything IS an entirely vacuous concept.  Spiritual but not religious people believe in a form of magic, but without having to define that magic, or provide any evidence for it.  If you are "spiritual but not religious" you believe in magic.

Why would people believe in a magic something for which there is no evidence, and furthermore is often thought it impossible to provide evidence about it?  I think such a belief comes from a cultural starting point (conventional religious belief) subjected to a modern intellect (the challenging of ideas.)  Raised Catholic to believe in a cookie becoming the body of God, and then taught to think critically, a person is quite likely to find this concept nonsense.  Finding one nonsense concept in a religion and you become able to find many more.  Still, the childhood belief in God can still be there.  The objection is to the religion, not God.

Still, if you believe that the trappings and dogma of religion are false, why would you not think that the central concept is false also?  Well, many do.  However, many don't.  I think the reason that they don't is that a higher power provides comfort, particularly to those who had believed growing up and therefore would "miss" the things that God provided.  What are the things that the idea of God provided?  Well, a higher power must have some sort of will, some desire, some plan.  This gives meaning to our existence, it means we aren't the result of a series of accidents.  God is also pretty universally thought to be loving (at least to those who behave) and to be surrounded by a loving, magical force is very comforting.  it must be very much like the comfort young children get from their apparently omnipotent parents.

I think "spiritual but not religious" is the direction that religion is heading, and I believe that this is so worldwide.  It provides the comfort of religion without the rules, and the necessity of subjecting that comfort to critical thinking.  It's a win-win for those who put themselves in this category.  I actually think that a very large proportion of those who put themselves in this category only do so when asked about their beliefs, in truth most in this category simply don't HAVE belief.

For those with adequate intellect I think either having no belief, simply not thinking about something without any relevance to our lives, or having defined beliefs are the only positions that are not intellectually cowardly.  By intellectually cowardly I mean preventing one's beliefs from challenge, believing something but not wanting that belief to be subject to intellectual thought.  If you believe in something you must be able to describe in what you believe, or you don't actually believe in it.  If you can describe something then such a thing is subject to argument, evidence, dispute.

For those who have this position i think it quite likely that they believe that either my Atheistic, materialistic position is cowardly (that I outright dismiss the possibility of anything higher, transcendent, or unexplainable (the last being a common accusation but false)) or a follower of traditional religion is cowardly (unwilling to think for themselves.)

Still, I'll leave you with this thought.  Do you actually know what you believe and why?  If not, aren't you just making stuff up to make you feel better?