Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape Read Online Free Page A

called into question—why was she walking alone, why was she in that neighborhood, why did she drink so much? If she is raped by someone she knows, her actions are similarly evaluated, and the question of whether it was “really” rape is inevitably raised—why did she go out with him if she didn’t want sex, why did she invite him up to her room, why did she go to a frat party, why did she drink wine at dinner, why did she consent to some sexual activity if she didn’t want to consent to all of it?
     
    Men are 150 percent more likely to be the victims of violent crimes than women are. 21 Men are more likely to be both victims and perpetrators of crimes. Men are more likely to be assaulted, injured, or killed when alcohol is involved. Men are more likely to be victimized by a stranger (63 percent of violent victimizations), whereas women are more likely to be victimized by someone they know (62 percent of violent victimizations). Women are more likely to be victimized in their home or in the home of someone they know, whereas men are more likely to be victimized in public. 22
     
    And yet it is women who are treated to “suggestions” about how to protect themselves from public stranger assaults: go out with a friend, don’t drink too much, don’t walk home alone, take a self-defense class. Well-meaning as they may be, such suggestions send the false message that women can prevent rape. Certainly, on an individual basis, self-defense and other trainings do help women to protect themselves. But while these trainings are invaluable for the women they assist, they place all of the responsibility on the individual women who use them—in other words, they are not the answer to dismantling rape culture.
     
    The focus on the victim’s behavior, rather than the perpetrator’s, sends the message that a woman must be eternally on guard, lest she bring sexual assault onto herself. This message adds to a broader view of women as vulnerable, keeping women fearful and justifying paternalistic and sexist laws and customs. As media critic Laura Kipnis writes:
     
    “Given the vast number of male prison rapes and the declining number of female nonprison rapes, it seems as though the larger social story about sexual vulnerability is due to be altered. It is, after all, a story upon which a good chunk of gender identity hinges, including a large part of what it feels like to be a woman: endangered.” 23
     
     
     
    The “if only she had . . . ” response to rape serves the valuable psychological purpose of allowing other women to temporarily escape that sense of endangerment. If we convince ourselves that we would never have done what she did, that her choices opened her up to assault and we would have behaved differently, then we can feel safe.
     
    But it’s a strategy that is bound to fail. The threat of rape holds women—all women—hostage. Obviously, women and men need to take common-sense measures to avoid all sorts of victimization, but the emphasis on rape as a pervasive and constant threat is crucial to maintaining female vulnerability and male power. That narrative, though, does more than just paralyze women—it privileges men. The benefits that stem from the simple ability to not live in fear are impossible to quantify. Certainly many, if not most, men have no desire to keep women afraid, but there are some whose goals necessitate a fearful and compliant female population. How else will they justify keeping women under their thumbs under the guise of “protection”?
     
    Conservative “pro-family” activists envision a world in which men are in control, both in the public realm and at home. But the natural desire for freedom and autonomy exists in women, and has always been nearly impossible to smother with bribery (the carrot of the wedding and the family and the home) alone. The stick also has to come out, and that’s where the pervasive threat of rape (or otherwise losing one’s “virtue”) comes