May 15, 2009 It’s 7:39 a.m and I’ve cried already
This article in the SMH from Karen Willis of the NSW Rape Crisis Centre.
I still have issues with some of the language of the opening paragraphs (ie/”it may not have been criminal sexual assault”…also it may *well* have been, and “she had sex with six of them”, or if you believe Clare, was raped by six of them). I know what she’s doing there, she’s getting at even if it’s not technically criminal sexual assault their behaviour was still wrong and destroyed her. I just think that ‘it may not have been’ is well covered, where as ‘it may have been’ hardly got a look in. And if I was Clare ‘had sex with’ would sound incredibly offensive.
But this:
The work we do every day at the Rape Crisis Centre tells us there is a need for cultural change not just within league, but across all levels of society. If we want to reduce violence against women we need the silent majority of ethical men to take a stand. We need them to say the jokes about women, the mistreatment, and the violence are no part of being a man. We need them to say to unethical men that it is all utterly unacceptable.
Men?
Tags: commentary on Four Corners report into 'code of silence', Karen Willis, Rape Crisis Centre, SMH, we need the silent majority of ethical men to take a stand...so take a stand please
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Fuck Politeness 
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Linda Radfem
said
Yeah, I just commented on this at HAT. i think Karen Willis probably knows too well how to tread carefully enough to have such a piece published in a mainstream paper.
The other thing I raised an eyebrow at was the “silent majority of ethical men” thing.
I’m not sure that group is a majority, and do they get to wear the ethical guy badge at all if they’ve never challenged the other “unethical” ones?
Silence is tacit approval is encouragment as far as I’m concerned.
Channel Ten news are still refering to the “group sex romp” too btw. Like wtf?
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fuckpoliteness
said
Yes, that is something I was pondering to LR…that I know that the majority of men don’t rape. But is that enough to be considered ‘ethical’? If you know it’s wrong and you say nothing because dudely approval is more important than women’s rights to live with bodily autonomy do you get to be considered ‘ethical’? I hear so many men ready to jump down the throats of women with ‘Well we’re not ALL rapists’. No, but as Karen Willis pointed out, you LAUGH AT THE JOKES and that’s a part of rape culture, of a culture that demeans and opresses and silences women. So really to be considered ethical in this setting I’d say you need to do more than merely refrain from raping which is not in itself cookie-worthy.
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Aileen Wuornos
said
It’s such a shame she had to tone down what she was probably really thinking.
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kimpowell
said
But how often to rapists talk to non-rapists about their activities? That’s what is so wrong about the way we’re approaching this. First we told women that if they don’t get drunk/wear short skirts/walk home by themselves they won’t get raped. But rape still happened. So now the approach is telling non-raping men to speak out about it, but how exactly do they do this? In the newspaper? In the pub? I can’t imagine non-rapists regularly hanging out with guys who think forcing a woman to fuck them is ok. Why aren’t we telling rapists not to rape? Seems like the sensible thing to do. After all, we tell shoplifters not to steal, we don’t try and tell their friends to tell their friends not to steal.
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fuckpoliteness
said
I don’t know if she means “When your mate says he raped someone tell him that’s bad”, I think she means ‘When you’re having a beer and one of your mates makes off colour remarks about women he’d like to *do*, or what a *slag* that chick looks like, or *fat chick* jokes, or ‘slut’ jokes, or ‘Asian women’ jokes or *hysterical women* jokes, or drink spiking jokes then have the balls to say ‘That ain’t cool arsehole’ since it’s all a part of the culture of devaluing and dehumanising women and if you stay silent you’re culpable, and if you wanna claim to be ethical you need to DO something to earn that beyond simply not raping women”.
I think that telling rapists not to rape is one part of it, but rapists deny being rapists, and rapists don’t give a fuck what women think or say, but they DO care about the regard and approbation of their manly mates.
I think that all men have at some point in their life had a beer with another man who has at some point in *their* life engaged in behaviour that is rape. The guy who raped wouldn’t discuss it openly or as rape, and wouldn’t see it that way, but that doesn’t mean that non-rapists don’t fraternise with rapists, they’d do so unwittingly and reasonably frequently. And the thing is that lots of non rapist men hang out with men who have terribly shitty attitudes to women and do not bother to stand up to them over it. And I think the point of the article is that the men with piss poor attitudes to women will never listen to WOMEN who pull them up but if men stand up to them it may have some impact.
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kimpowell
said
Yeah, I get that, but it does seem to be tinkering around the edges. If the only approach is to tell men that if you overhear another bloke saying something degrading about women, pull them up on it, then we’ll be waiting a long time for real change.
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Linda Radfem
said
KP I wrote a blog post about this issue a while back. I think it’s relevant to this discussion.
All men participate in rape culture and all men benefit from the privilege that comes from women being subjugated. There is a great quote, and I forget who said it, but this issue brings it to mind.”When some men use physical force to subjugate women, all men need not”
My post:
http://apublicblogging.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/like-father-like-son/
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fuckpoliteness
said
Well I think that this is a woman who works for the Rape Crisis Centre, and works with NRL in order to challenge precisely the attitudes of men who might otherwise think rape is acceptable. So I’m not sure she’s saying it’s the only strategy, or that it’s the only strategy she’s currently involved in, I think it’s more a ‘The problem is bigger than Footy – this is a gender violence issue and all men are required to help stop this’ call. And while I feel some disquiet about some stuff in the article, I think her argument will be that if our strategy only focuses on rapists, and not on radical changes in men’s socialisation and their ways of engaging with one another we’ll be waiting even longer. Because you can tell a rapist not to rape til you’re blue in the face but if you leave that structure of misogyny in place and ‘acceptable’ then what hope is there for any progress? I could just be confused as I’m crosseyed with exhaustion from thinking about all this…
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Deborah
said
FP, some months ago Anita wrote an excellent post at KiwiPolitico, calling on men to call out rapists: Friends don’t let friends rape. It was what pushed me to write my own post On rape and consent.
The thing that caused the most outrage in Anita’s post was that she made what to me was the obvious statement that we all know rapists.
It was amazing how uptight some of the XY types got about that claim.
If you do go and read Anita’s post, be careful about carrying on to the comments thread – it could be triggering in places.