rape myths
2007-05-14 13:26:54.542343+00 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
Dang, for a theme that's allegedly inspired by Masturbation Month (I've dropped the "National" because everyone else has, why limit ourselves?) we're sure end up doing a lot of theorizing. But then I'm the sort of person who would end up with the text pages in a Playboy stuck together (or at least would have back in the days when they were also a pretty darned good general magazine, a time that I think is gone). But various threads have me revisiting some old notions, and it's good to exercise those neurons.
I mentioned some of the guilt issues in rape that I've encountered in the discussion with Eric under "without the veil", and in the "rape statistics" thread, NoPornNorthampton linked to an entry in which he quoted extensively from the "Family Facts" website, part of the text included:
In 1995, the Journal of Communication reported on a meta-analysis of 24 different studies. Researchers found that "A relationship between pornography consumption and believing rape myths exists...."
Now there are an awful lot of rape myths, but I believe that one of the most damaging rape myths we can possibly hold is the notion that power struggle is not a part of sexual allure or eroticism. One of the notions that I recounted in the "without the veil" thread was that the cultural reaction to rape is sometimes as damaging to the victim as the rape itself, and one of the issues here is that because we in the culture haven't (until mainstream BDSM came along, and then only those of us out on the fringe) had the opportunity to talk about consent, and to allow that fantasies, even realized ones, can have some pretty nitpicking qualifications, the existence of a rape fantasy is assumed to be the desire to be raped.
So many women, having failed to repress some submissive fantasies, feel guilt over having been raped, because our culture told them that fantasy wasn't okay, that if they'd imagined it, then they deserved it.
That is why I scream so loudly when people try to conflate the fantasy of pornography with the harsh reality of the crimes in the real world.