People are angry at me for what I said about rape
A few days ago I wrote a story that made a lot of people angry at me and I had to turn off the comments section.
The thing that people didn’t like was that I pointed out that perpetrators are very often victims too. Ironically, I don’t think that I said anything new here, it is well known that people who are abused tend to abuse others.
I feel very strongly about safeguarding victims and holding offenders accountable and I say so explicitly in my story but I do feel that no baby boys are born rapists. Being born male does not predispose a person towards violence against women.
Sadly a subset of men do go on to become sexual offenders and deviants due to patriarchal pressures and past abuse and trauma. Below is the story that stirred up all this anger at me.
I have changed the title to “Why some men become rapists” because I realized that the original title I had “Men are NOT the cause of rape” could have been triggering for some survivors. I am sorry if I did trigger anyone.
I keep hearing stuff like “Rapists rape”. Of course they do but saying this is not very helpful. Its easier to believe that some people are different from the rest of us, they are ‘bad’ but these type of blinders aren’t conducive to thinking about solutions that could reduce violence against women.
I read a book on campus rape called Missoula by Jon Krakauer. It was a very well researched book. A few things stood out to me. One was that most rapes go unpunished both because our justice system is prejudiced against victims and also because going through the legal process is too painful for many victims. Second, I noticed that in an overwhelming amount of the cases alcohol was a factor.
If I say alcohol plays a role in rape then I know that people will start yelling at me but if we shut this topic down here we will not be able to discuss the fact the it does seem likely that many rapists are also alcoholics. An alcoholic is defined as a person whose life becomes unmanageable due to drinking and drinking and raping is about as unmanageable as things can get. Just like murderers use weapons rapists can use alcohol to dull their own and the victims empathic feelings and to allow themselves to feel the unconscious rage within them.
Alcoholism and addiction is a trauma response. Addiction is an attachment disorder.
We live in a culture where you’re cool if you played drinking games and passed out but revealing that you go to AA is a source of shame.
Personally I have AA envy. I have several friends in AA and I think the twelve step program is a gift. Everyone, not just addicts could benefit from a thorough inventory of their emotional lives and with processing their feelings around their past.
In my opinion, changing the way that college students view binge drinking and encouraging them to do the work to become emotionally healthy might reduce campus rape. Given that few rape cases get persecuted there may be a lot to be gained by working on changing the culture to stop rape from taking place in the first place.
Most pain in our world is caused by denial. We do not wish to see the truth for it is too painful so we put people in good and bad buckets to make ourselves comfortable.
Reality is not black and white. Humans do horrible things to each other but they can also do incredibly loving things for one another. We are imperfect and also beautiful in our imperfection.
