[Trigger warning: this article features discussion about rape.]
US Representative Todd Akin (R-MO) made headlines over the weekend for his scientifically inaccurate and misogynist description of how women’s bodies deal with pregnancies conceived through rape.
Akin was a guest on St. Louis-based KTVI-TV’s Sunday morning talk show “the Jaco Report.” The host, Charles Jaco, asked, “If an abortion could be considered in the case of tubal pregnancy or something like that, what about in the case of rape, should it be legal or not?”
“Well you know, uh, people always want to try and make that as one of those things — well, how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question,” Akin said. “It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. You know, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist, and not attacking the child.”
Once the story broke, Akin released a statement saying that he misspoke. While many, including GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, have called for him to drop out of the upcoming Senate race against incumbent Claire McCaskill (D-MO), others, like former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, are standing behind him. Akin announced on Tuesday that he would not be dropping from the race.
During Akin’s time in the House, as a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, he co-sponsored a bill with current vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan that sought to, among other things, change the definition of rape to “forcible rape.”
32,000 women get pregnant from rape per year, according to a 1996 study by gynecologist Dr. Melisa Holmes. Additionally, women do not have biological mechanisms that kick in and abort a potential pregnancy when they suffer rape-related trauma. Finally, and most importantly: There is no such thing as “legitimate” or “illegitimate” rape. That kind of dichotomy is disgusting; implying that some victims are being untruthful when they come forward is so fundamentally misogynist that it boggles the mind.
However, it isn’t really surprising that Akin — a stereotypical religious conservative with a history of trying to legislate female reproductive rights out of existence — believes these things. He is a logical product of a state that not only incorporates patriarchy into its legal framework, but its social and cultural institutions as well.
Akin is the product of a system that promotes the false idea that women need men just to exist, that women should only ever be concerned with having and raising children and keeping the home clean; a system that looks with disgust upon women who seek to live and work and play independently of it. It is a system that permeates all aspects of all our lives. Akin — and many others, both in and outside the insulated sphere of electoral politics — not only accept this system but rush headlong to meet it, and as such, it is understandable (though by no means acceptable) that this occurred in the first place.
It’s easy to dismiss or mock Akin as “just another misogynist Republican” (and to be clear, he is one) and be done with the whole affair, but it is perhaps more useful and productive — especially as anarchists — to approach this situation and its aftermath with the intent of opening a frank and visible discussion about patriarchy and oppression. Patriarchy infects everyone under it as it endeavours to perpetuate itself. We are not immune to it, even though we recognize that it is a coercive societal force, and if all we do is point and laugh, we have helped patriarchy along.
There is a vibrant and productive current of anarchist feminism that exists today. We (speaking as a straight, cisgender, white male to my straight, cisgender, white male comrades) need to listen to this current. We need to heed what they have been trying to tell us for years. We need to start shutting down the disappointing trend of “manarchism” that has popped up in recent years and work with anarcha-feminists to popularize and spread ideas of a world without the State, a world built upon voluntary free association and mutual aid and the idea that all persons are equal — not just dudes.
Citations to this article:
- Trevor Hultner, ‘If It’s a Legitimate Rape …’ Let’s Just Stop You Right There, Batesville, Arkansas Daily Guard, 08/24/12
"implying that some victims are being untruthful when they come forward is so fundamentally misogynist that it boggles the mind."
I hate to nitpick, but this is a really awkward sentence, what with your stress being on "some" (seeming to make it opposed to "most", which is definitely not what you're saying) and then almost seeming to state that no one ever lies about being raped.
Nitpick aside, I do agree with you. I'm not well-versed in anarcha-feminism, and I don't personally identify as a feminist or masculist (I prefer "gendervidualist"), but libertarianism's tendency toward right-wing views on gender have definitely been a major problem. Libertarians' partnering with the Right against Communism is a mistake we're all still paying for.
Libertarians need to listen to feminists, and vice versa.
Thanks for your comment, badocelot.
“I hate to nitpick, but this is a really awkward sentence, what with your stress being on “some” (seeming to make it opposed to “most”, which is definitely not what you’re saying) and then almost seeming to state that no one ever lies about being raped.”
I was not trying to imply that fraudulent rape charges /never/ happen. However, on average only about two to four percent of reported rapes are fraudulent. The point here is that the statistically insignificant occurrence of fraudulent rape accusations are being used to paint any and all survivors as potential liars and that is misogynist as all getout. We (societally speaking) are more likely to take a man who has been raped (as approximately nine percent of reported rape victims are indeed males) at his word than we are to take a woman survivor at hers. This is plainly messed up. When you add to that the fact that roughly 60 percent of rapes in the US are never even reported, the attempt by those on the right to parse “legitimate rape” from “illegitimate rape” is even more egregious.
And hey, there’s nothing wrong with identifying as a feminist.
Though gendertarian is interesting. Also I agree with you on the libertarian stuff, though I was primarily referring to sort of your more “conventional anarchist” with all the manarchy business.
Appreciate the input!
Trevor
I noticed that too. Look back to the days of open lynching of black men in the U.S.. More than a few of these incidents were related to a white female accusing a black male of rape. Sometimes the claim would be recanted after the male was already strung up. A more recent example might be the incident involving the Duke lacrosse players. I certainly don't think this is common, I'm just saying never say never. People of any gender are capable of telling horrific lies that destroy other people's lives. And the rights of the accused shouldn't vanish if the accuser is a female. The goals of feminism are not served by placing women on a pedestal.
Other than that, I think Trevor's analysis was a great smack down of reactionary views on gender.
I just wanted to say that I am extremely glad this appeared in the blog. I would love to see more commentary on how statism and patriarchy intersect.
I have read the opposite: that male rape victims are less likely to come forward, and less likely to be believed when they do (especially if their rapist is a woman). Of course, that arguably could be a symptom of patriarchy itself-men being rulers, we are expected to take care of ourselves, rape is something that happens to women, etc.
First of all, YES false rape allegations occur. And we can't accurately check clearance or conviction rates to establish a baseline of "false allegations" because the normal judicial principles of mens rea and burden of proof seldom apply in rape cases, ESPECIALLY when the media gets hold of them.
Second, YES THERE ARE ILLEGITIMATE RAPES. Or are we to presume that the statutory "rape" of a 17-year-old by her 18-year-old boyfriend is an ACTUAL rape and not the product of a broken State bureaucracy attempting to draw hard lines in soft sand? What about jurisdictions that treat alcohol as a "date rape drug" and classify any woman who has sex while under the influence a rape victim, and her likely equally-inebriated partner a rapist?
Are these not illegitimate "rapes"? I think so. I think any good anarchist would think so.
Rape is a crime about a person having sex with someone who does not consent to that sex. How the State, how hyper-feminists, and how reasonable people define "consent" are very different things. In the world of radical feminism, saying "lets have sex" but not really MEANING it can be enough to make it "rape" in certain circles. And if that person, the next day, presses charges, the State's tendency to take the evidence of sex as evidence of rape (from the mere ASSUMPTION that no woman would lie about having offered consent, which is demonstrably ridiculous) can mean that a rape charge was filed that a radical feminist considers "real", but no sane person with even a basic understanding of the principles of justice would.
So I take exception to the idea that there is no "illegitimate rape" because that idea suggests that the State, which any decent anarchist would be forced to admit is completely incapable of doing ANYTHING 100% right, somehow managed to nail the process for determining if an act as personal as sexual intercourse was involuntary right on the head every single time. I don't buy it, and no anarchist should.
My recent post psychogeographicalsomaticism:
Talking to people about politics in the Deep South can demonstrate…
I'm afraid you're mistaken in thinking that false accusations of rape are "statistically insignificant". I mention this only because your message should neither be accepted nor ignored on the basis of such an avoidable error.
Estimates for false reporting of rape tend to hover around 10%, with plenty of furious disputes about definitions, methods, and results. Of course everyone involved has an agenda, and for each repulsive idiot who thinks like Todd Akin, you'll find a corresponding fanatic who believes there simply is no such thing as a false accusation of rape.
Don't take my word for it: call the sex crimes bureau at your nearest metropolitan police department and ask them about unreported rapes and unfounded accusations. They'll tell you the city sees too many of both.
thumbs up.
Um, he wasn't trying to say that the State is right at all. He wasn't supporting any of the things you said.
He was saying this was an opportunity to DISCUSS the effects of patriarchy and misogyny in our society, of which people like Akin are the most obvious manifestations.
Now, you do raise a good question about how statutory rape laws can obscure things in people's minds. I do think age-of-consent laws are more than a little dubious, especially when dealing with 1-2 year age differences.
But, that is not what his is about. What Hultner is saying is that patriarchy, sexism, & misogyny are not personal moral failings. They are pervasive social values, not explicitly articulated, which shape our thinking. Akin is just a particularly obvious manifestation.
Racism, homophobia, sexism, etc are not something that is in any way exclusive to "bad people", who can be singled out and excluded and disciplined. They are deeply rooted, oppressive social structures, for which no easy fixes exist. Only through consciousness raising, discussion, and calm confrontation can we ever have a hope of beating these things back. It may yet be an endless process.
Note, I do not presume to police people's language; harass a writer, artist, or comedian; endlessly damn "dead white males"; or anything you might (wrongly) associate with this line of thinking. I am more interested in exploring why such things manifest, as opposed attacking every single manifestation of them.
"They'll tell you the city sees too many of both."
"They'll tell you the city sees too many of both."
This, to me, is the crux of the problem, and the reason I reject (as a queer but "cisgender" white male) much of Trevor's argument. The system is broken, but the broken system is extremely multifaceted and complex. A culture of rape does exist. A strong element of patriarchy, which expresses itself on television through idiotic statements by failed politicians, but also viscerally in the bodies of women and nonconforming men, exists.
Those are not the only problems. A culture of accusation, in which the presumption of innocence and the right to face one's accused are abandoned, exists. A culture of "consent," where sexual assault is redefined to mean any action whatsoever that one participant may have been uncomfortable with, and which reduces sex to legal-ish transactions where each participant has to say things like "Can I go from kissing your lips to kissing your neck, now can I kiss your lips again, now can I move my hand from your back to your hips" or be guilty of rape, exists, and is terribly common in college-left circles.
A culture of hyper-sensitivity, where we are all assumed to be broken, damaged, and incredibly weak psychologically– so that "trigger warnings" have to appear before any public discussion of any thing that might conceivably bother anybody, anywhere– has permeated the Left, especially here on the internet. I believe it is incredibly destructive.
I also believe that none of the second bracket of problems I've identified– the culture of accusation, the culture of consent, the culture of hypersensitivity– are as severe as the problems of rape and patriarchy. But I believe they're terrible solutions to the problems of rape and patriarchy, and we need better ones.
So, to be clear, you're really not backing down off the statement that "implying that some victims are being untruthful when they come forward is so fundamentally misogynist that it boggles the mind."
Badocelot's suggested quite reasonably that "some" should be changed to "most", as in "implying that most victims are being untruthful when they come forward is so fundamentally misogynist that it boggles the mind." (A formulation with which everyone here would surely agree.)
You thanked her for her post nicely enough, but…are you ignoring that suggestion?
Yes, he is saying these things. But he is also saying that we are failing in our duty as decent people if we question them. My point was that there ARE "illegitimate rapes". I believe I demonstrated that reality. You don't get to fight the patriarchy by establishing the rape-triarchy. The idea that no ideas about rape culture or male dominance may EVER receive anything less than flowering agreement is broken and gross.
Yes, we do need to address rape. We also need to address murder, but in the latter case we don't slap "trigger warning: MURDER" on every discussion of shootings, belittle or shame anyone's claim that an attempt was made on their life, or leave room for subjective interpretation. We strike to the moral heart of the matter, we determine whether or not the act was an attempt to wilfully take the life of another, gather the evidence, and we move on.
If rape is a product of the patriarchy, what is murder? Is it so horrible to approach a very real problem from the angle of "there are terrible, sick, troubled, and evil people in this world, and they do awful, awful things"?
I'm sorry, but the feminist crusade against "rape culture" that insists that rape is the product of some social construct rather than the violent actions of terrible human beings simply REEKS of the constant claims that violent video games or lax gun control are responsible for murders. Why the obsession with society bearing the brunt of every terrible thing?
I agree that sexism exists and should be dealt with, but I challenge the concept of "the patriarchy", as if we wander around in a fundamentally man-o-centric male-ocracy and women are expected to be helpless and silent. It's a wholly unsubstantiated idea based on Professional Feminists who, for career reasons, must advance the concept of The Struggle indefinitely.
Wendy McElroy is a feminist worth discussing here, because THAT is what real libertarian/anarchist feminism looks like, not the progressive-left neverending eggshell walk that begins whenever someone suggests that "illegitimate rape" is not a thing worth discussing.
My recent post some dude posted one of your blogposts on the mises forums, thread is titled 'interesting blog post on anarcho-capitalism' btw
"We (societally speaking) are more likely to take a man who has been raped (as approximately nine percent of reported rape victims are indeed males) at his word than we are to take a woman survivor at hers. "
This is a profoundly ignorant statement. A hugeportion of – I'd guess most- Americans believe that the great majority (according to the CDC's 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey) of therapes committed against men outside of prison are literally IMPOSSIBLE and/or don't actually count as "rape" as they use they word. Because they believe that no able-bodied man could be coerced by a woman, or that erection equals consent, or that every male old enough to have two digits in his age is a mindless hypersexual brute, or that no woman would ever do such a thing, or that involuntary sexual acts involving a man or boy and a woman just don't count as rape, at least not "legitimate" rape, when its the one with the penis who hasn't consented.
James Landrith http://jameslandrith.com/content/category/8/181/7… and Jacob Taylor (http://toysoldier.wordpress.com/on-being/) are both worth reading for some first-hand accounts of how this sort of thing plays out, and I've encountered nothing that makes me think their experiences are anomalies or outliers. Quite the contrary.
(Ironically, Landrith's assailant forced his submission by threatening to falsely accuse HIM of rape, and based on other accounts of similar crimes I've encountered that seems like a not-uncommon tactic. So your insistence that the possibility of a wrongful accusation is so small that it's misogynistic to even worry about is much to some rapists' benefit.)
And before someone makes the inevitable rejoinder that such crimes are too freakishly rare to bother with- and that I'm a misogynist reactionary for even mentioning it as if it mattered, perhaps- please have a look at the definitions and 12-month victimization figures on pages 17-19 of the same CDC report. It's choices of terminology suffer from the same problems described above, but at least they actually asked about it this time, which is more than most can say.
As for a man raped by other men outside of prison, on what do you base your claim that he is more likely to be taken at his word than a woman? There's no shortage of accusations hurled at men who make such claims- if he's straight, he just doesn't want to admit to having had consensual gay sex, if he's gay he's an unrapeable slut much like straight men raped by women. If he was a minor at the time, both of those apply plus “he's making it up for money.”
As for the rape of male prisoners by other prisoners, they pretty clearly aren't being taken at their word by the folks who count- the officials who actually have the power to either stop it or let it continue. You might say that the officials aren't really disbelieving, just indifferent, but that's the case for a lot of female victims who aren't taken at their word, too. There's also the largely ignored issue of sex crimes against male prisoners by female staff, and in that case everything said about male victims of rape once again applies.
This has been a bracing reminder of why I am not a feminist, nor a left-libertarian, no matter how much I hate the norms and attitudes about gender that feminists refer to as “Patriarchy.” This sort of denial, minimization, and erasure of harms suffered by men and boys (among others) is so pervasive, so uncritically accepted by all but a tiny (and, much as I appreciate their efforts, marginal and impotent) minority, so tightly woven into so much feminist theory and discourse, so seemingly instinctive, that it never, ever stops. It seems so casual and reflexive that I don't think most of you COULD stop, even if you wanted to.
I'm impress
It's excellent to see a bunch of men unpack narratives for themselves and engage in meaningful discourse around rape! Speaking as a white looking, white raised, cisgender, bi-sexual Australian Aboriginal woman with a history of childhood, teen and young adult rape, I appreciate that some effort is being made outside of the usual circles to discuss and critique the state societal narrative of rape.
I have particularly been impressed by the discourse that reverses my own abhorrence of the term "legitimate rape" by including terms of reference I had not previously considered. I do however think it important to be very, very clear when you share your views with society. Most people apply the word rape to mean non-consensual activity. Statutory Rape is not usually analysed within the same framework as non-consensual sex and paedophilia. It is an interesting caveat, but at the same time, does nothing to divert the premise of this piece, that "legitimate rape" is specifically referring to non-consensual sexual acts where "she had it coming to her".
As for the various positions on feminism. I also used to think that it was bollocks and wanted nothing to do with it. I thought of myself as an 'equalist', not a feminist. Having spoken with a range of feminist women on what feminism means to them, I have discovered that I am in fact a feminist, insomuch as I am always going to stand on the side of whoever's copping a shit deal. In my opinion, and in the opinion of the majority of women I personally know who identify as feminist, the point of feminism is to address an unbalance, not to create a different one. It's about eliminating the double standard, not developing a new one.
Actually, a NYC DA investigation/research project found that approx 45% of alleged rapes could not be substantiated, so this 4% number is complete bs. False rape allegations are extremely common because they are so very easy to make, and since the Mondale act of 1974, are very difficult to reverse/retract.
I think that what the jackass politician was trying to say or imply is that female orgasm has a purpose. It increases the odds of pregnancy, correctly inferring that lack of orgasm, for instance in a "legitimate" rape, relatively lowers the odds of pregnancy.
Sometimes I get ideas through blogs. Your post is one giving some ideas.