What I wanted to talk about are my own sentiments on this matter. I have discussed them before, but now may be a good time to revisit them. Click the blog title if you're interested to read more. It is very long and, despite being published, still in the rough draft phase because I really would like to craft it into a proper essay.
Part I. Introduction
Certain human beings "ask for it." By that we mean that they seek out what would normally be considered an undesirable circumstance or situation. For example, generations of parents have spoken the words "NOW YOU'RE ASKING FOR IT!" before punishing their small children for misbehaving. But are all of these children usually hoping to be spanked or sent to time out, and this is why they misbehaved in the first place? No. Child psychiatrists are obsessed with the Needy Child model, the child who misbehaves because he seeks attention, and the model has certainly been helpful in understanding heretofore enigmatic miscreant behavior; but, I think it is fair to say that most children misbehave because they are both ignorant and self-gratifying. This is why they don't do as they're told until some harsh punishment is introduced: because only then is the child forced to weigh the benefits of his deviant behavior against the newly-introduced costs that go with it. Indeed, this is the very reason why we punish children or adults for their misbehavior: because it introduces an extrinsic cost to the action which one hopes outweighs the intrinsic benefit(s) to that behavior. (Classic example: there is a strong correlation between a person's likelihood to commit an act which is illegal but which benefits him and the attached punishment should he be caught. For example, many more people downloaded many more MP3s in the late 1990s than did in the early 2000s.)
So having established that the punishment-seeking miscreant is the exception and not the rule, I should like to reiterate that such individuals do in fact exist and therefore we have two different audiences which we must take into consideration when we ask the question, "Does a person ever ask to be punished, violated, or raped?"
Part II. Thesis/Claim/Topic Sentence
I believe that there are in fact many people in this world who "ask" to be punished. But I believe that there are two kinds: those who ignorantly (i.e. non-deliberately) ask to be punished and those who cognizantly (i.e. deliberately) ask to be punished.
Part III. Those Who Didn't Mean To Ask
When speaking of people who asked without intending to ask, what we mean is that the person unintentionally solicited others to act in ways which the ignorant solicitor considers to be unpleasant and/or unwelcome.
Part IV. Those Who Meant To Ask
The sexual exhibitionist is the most easy-to-understand example that I can think of of a person who seeks to be the victim in what would normally be considered sexually criminal, perverse, or horrifying situations. In most true cases of sexual exhibitionism, the exhibitionist is not coerced or blackmailed into stripping in public or shopping in the supermarket with nothing but a trenchcoat on, etc. Generally the exhibitionist hatches the plan on his or her own and enacts it on his or own. Furthermore, in most cases where there is a 2nd party who coerces the exhibitionist to do such things, the exhibitionist normally has a valid choice (i.e. the ability to genuinely select between two outcomes). Granted, the alternative to the sexual exhibition may be so horrific (e.g. "I'll blow your husband's brains out if you don't walk outside naked and knock on your neighbor's door") that the victim really has no practical alternative despite having a technical alternative; but in most cases of coerced sexual exhibition, the selections from which to choose exist both in the technical sense as well as in the practical sense. (e.g. "if you don't do as I say, I'll break up with you"). I have explained this in order to say that we will focus in this section of the essay solely on sexual exhibition, and more specifically on sexual exhibition which is at least in part, if not entirely, chosen by the exhibitionist out of a pool of practical choices from which to pick.
Part V. Differences between the two
First, let's look at some of the ways in which a person might solicit sexual advances:
- They might wear tight-fitting clothes which prominently reveal the outlines of their breasts, nipples, vaginal labia, penis, testicles, or buttocks.
- They might were wearing clothes which partially, if not fully, expose the person's eyes, mouth, breasts, hips, buttocks, vagina, penis, testicles, or thighs.
- They might wear clothes with sexually-suggestive writing. The writing may be a demonstrative, imperative, or interrogative in nature.
- They might masturbate away from home (e.g. public toilet, classroom, cubicle) even if/when they seem to be all alone and invisible to the outside world.
- They might masturbate at home despite the presence of other family members in other parts of the house.
Almost any of these could be something which either a Part III person or a Part IV person might do. What determines whether they are a Part III person or a Part IV person is motive. The person who does these things without intending to solicit sex from others is a Part III person, whereas the person who does these things partly or solely for the purpose of soliciting sex from others is a Part IV person.
Note that a person could be both Parts III and IV if, for example, they wanted to achieve a certain sexual outcome (IV) but the situation went in an unanticipated direction (III). As a specific example, a secretary who commutes to work via the subway might deliberately wear tight-fitting business skirts because she wants men to squeeze her butt, making her a Type IV gropee, but she may not welcome men on the subway attempting to then take it to the next level by molesting her genitals, making her a Type III molestee.
Part VI. A closer look at one specific difference between the two
Suppose we have a 16-year old girl whose boobs are filling in (already a C cup). She is wearing a tanktop which shows a great deal of her breasts when she leans over. She and her 18-year old brother are both doing their homework at home after school. No one else is home right now except for the two of them. The girl goes to her brother's room to ask him for help with one of her homework problems. As he is helping her out, she is exposing her breasts to him a great deal (to the extent that a loose-fitting low-cut tanktop allows).
You with me so far? Now, there are several variables we've yet to address:
(1) Does either sibling have incestual feelings towards the other?
(2) If so, is the other sibling aware of it? and is the original sibling aware of this?
(3) Is the girl genuinely seeking help with her homework? trying to entice her brother? both? neither?
(4) Did the boy agree to help his sister out with her homework to be nice? to get a look at her body? both? neither?
The Part III Sister: one of many examples of this girl would be the one who doesn't have incestual feelings towards her brother, who isn't aware that he does have those feelings towards her, and who really only wanted help with her homework. Would I still say that she is "asking for it" if her brother loses his mind and flings her onto the bed? Yeah, I think I might. She's two years younger than him, they're both teenagers interested in sex, he's a guy and she's a girl, she's got a great figure, she's wearing clothes which reveal that figure, and she went into his bedroom when there's no one else at home. It's not the same thing as saying that she deserved it or that she technically asked her brother to have sex with her: the point is, she practically asked, i.e. she may as well have asked. She's like the person who jumps into the waters off of Cape Horn covered in seal blood who says, "I never thought a Great White shark might actually attack me!" Dumb, dumb, dumb. Innocent motives but guilty-as-charged deeds.
The Part IV Sister: this would be the girl who has a thing for her brother, who is being girly and flirty with him, who is intentionally squeezing her boobs against the back of his head or against his shoulder, who (even though they're home alone) is dressed up as if she's about to go out on a date, etc. You can pretty much guarantee that this girl wants to do it with her brother but because of social norms just can't bring herself to come out and say it. (The guy should be the one to break the ice, incest is wrong, etc.) She can't ask him directly, but she's giving him all the signs she can indirectly.
Part VII. A look at the almost-undeniably Part IV person
Let's now make one small change: let's say that instead of wearing a loose-fitting low-cut tanktop, the girl from before was wearing a tight-fitting T-shirt that had a message screened onto the front: "SQUEEZE MY MELONS". Such a girl would almost certainly be a Part IV person! She wasn't made to wear the t-shirt. She very likely bought it of her own free will and put it on knowing what people's reactions to it would be. And she wears it now because, somewhere deep down inside, she hopes for someone to actually squeeze her boobs. In my mind, any girl who wears a shirt with words that invite strangers to perform sexual actions is (a) asking for it and (b) wanting it.
I know that many of you disagree, because I brought this point up before and you all said I was wrong. But even if you're going to sit there and tell me that a girl who wears a shirt that says "Squeeze My Melons" isn't asking to be groped, then I would at least insist that she would have to be an incredibly ignorant Part III person. She cannot be totally innocent because she isn't totally innocent. Undeniably, whether she meant for others to take it that way or not, she is wearing a shirt with a sexually-suggestive imperative statement. If that is not an invitation then I don't know what is. I'll grant you that it may not be intended on her part, but I think that no one would be surprised if, out of 18,000 women on a college campus, the one person to get her boobs squeezed from behind by a masked pervert was the girl with the DD boobs and the "Squeeze My Melons" t-shirt. No one would be surprised. No one.
Part VIII. Other arguments, Conclusion - not yet done
Part IX. Disclaimers & Other Information
First and foremost: I HATE RAPE. I think it is one of the most horrible things imaginable. I think it is like killing a person only they're still alive. If impregnated, you force that person to choose between an abortion, an abandonment of the newborn, or raising a child they conceived with a monster. Rape can be transformative and when it is it is almost always negatively so, i.e. some rape victims can no longer enjoy sex, other rape victims become obsessed with sex and lose themselves to it, some rape victims become hateful or bitter towards others who share the same gender or race with the rapist, etc. Anyone who knows me personally has probably heard my take on rape before, some of you the short version and others of you the long long long version. So yes: just throwing it out there, the last thing I will allow for anyone to do is to misconstrue the writing above as a defense of rape. I am not attempting to defend the rapist's actions; I am merely trying to understand, explain, and explore them. It is because I am against rape that I have a vested interest in identifying the possibility of rape victim accountability, i.e. in identifying ways in which rape victims "invited" rape. Knowing this allows me and others to think of ways in which we can try to preserve the quality of the lives of potential rape victims.
Second, I am aware that what I have written above may color me as a sexual pervert in some people's eyes. There is little I can do except to say that I politely disagree, that I suspect that the points I have publicized in this paper are no different from those you have privately had in your own head or discussed with your immediate family members, and that it is a poor exercise in logic to conclude that a person who discusses certan sexual scenarios (e.g. sexual exhibitionism, incest, rape, molestation) must either sympathize with or identify with those who perform them.
2 comments:
1 in 4 believe the scantily clad
"had it comin' to 'em?" I am flabbergasted by that statistic. That many people??
I would now like to politely address your horror. Naturally, our opinions may be irreconcilably different, but I would like to at least defend my own personal POV.
I originally wrote a lot (about twice as long as this total reply!), but at the very end of it I realized that it could all be summed up by these two sentences:
(1) I believe that there are victims in common legal cases whom the criminal took action against only because of deeds the victim performed or words the victim spoke.
(2) While I do not believe that such victims can be or should be said to deserve what they got, I also don't believe that it should be said that they were completely innocent in the matter, either.
For example, I do not think that any man or woman deserves to be killed for having a marital affair with another person; but nor do I think that the victim (i.e. the adulterer/adulteress) can be considered completely innocent in the matter of their death, either. To a certain extent, it must be said -- WE MUST, AS A SOCIETY, BE ALLOWED TO SAY -- that the adulterer/adulteress was at least partially responsible for what happened. Even if you're too squeamish to say it outloud, I know what you're thinking and so I'll say it for you: "if only they hadn't had the affair, then none of this would have happened." BAM! Right there! In that moment, as innocent as those words might have sounded to you, as polite as you might have thought them to be, those words were your judgment of the victim. They were your way of saying, "It's not like this was a senseless killing. It's not like I can honestly say that this person in no way, shape, or form could have anticipated or deserved what was about to happen to them. For every effect, there is a cause. And the cause in this murder was the adultery -- an action the victim undertook of his/her own free will."
In my mind, the only difference between this example and other court cases dealing with victim accountability is not the principle but the degree. That is it: a question of degree and degree alone. The principle of the matter remains the same: sometimes, a victim is at least partly responsible for their own victimization. And, as mentioned in my essay, the two categories are those who were intentionally responsible or partly responsible and those who were unintentionally responsible or partly responsible. Intention is distinct from accountability: the motive for the deed is not the doing of the deed.
If the English poll had asked, "Do you think that a scantily-dressed woman intends to be sexually assaulted," I think that would be a very different question from "Do you think she should be held accountable?" The former seeks to know what physical clues people rely upon to deduce the unspoken motives of others, whereas the latter seeks to know whether people believe victims should be co-charged alongside their primary criminal as secondary criminals, or "accomplices," if you will, and whether there is any reliable way of deciding which victims are their own secondary criminals and which victims are not.
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