Vancouver sex attack leads to debate over men in society
By Ethan Baron, The Province newspaper, October 19, 2009
Are all men potential rapists?
That’s a claim by Aurea Flynn, speaking for Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, in the wake of a brutal sexual attack this weekend on a 24-year-old woman in Vancouver’s upscale West Point Grey.
I spent about 20 minutes Monday talking to Flynn about rape, and agreed with nearly everything she said.
Rape is about power and control, domination by a man over a woman — check.
Sexual assault is so widespread that one in four Canadian women will experience it — check. Men need to speak out against violence against women, because our gender is to blame — check.
But I am not a potential rapist, and I don’t think Flynn’s claim is in any way helpful.
Painting all men with the same brush greatly hampers the co-operation between genders that’s needed to properly address our epidemic sexual violence.
I get where Flynn is coming from.
The fact that the threat of male violence restricts the freedom of women, and keeps them living with a constant undercurrent of fear is profoundly unjust.
Sexual attacks cause life-long damage. And far too many of my gender believe that women are lesser beings than men, that their rights in every area are somehow subservient to ours.
We should all be as angry as Flynn.
But the approach of Stephanie Reifferscheid of Vancouver’s Women Against Violence Against Women Rape Crisis Centre makes a great deal more sense.
“All men have the capacity to be loving, caring, respectful human beings,” Reifferscheid says. Sadly, many men fail to exercise that capacity.
Rapes by acquaintances, and sexual violence within relationships occur much more frequently than stranger attacks such as the one Sunday in which the man repeatedly punched then sexually assaulted a woman out walking.
But all varieties of sexual violence reflect “a sense of entitlement towards women and women’s bodies,” Reifferscheid says.
It was only in the 1980s that it became illegal for Canadian men to rape their wives, she notes. Sexualization of women in the media leads them to be valued as objects of male gratification, rather than for the intellectual and professional abilities they share equally with men.
Not only does this devaluation hinder social and economic equality, it helps turn women into potential victims of the ultimate male power trip: rape.
Reifferscheid points out that while men commonly commit random physical, non-sexual attacks against other men, when a man is randomly attacking a woman, the violence is often sexual. The man is hitting her where, in his mind, her value rests: in her sexuality.
Men need to start paying more attention to the value we and our friends and associates put on women, and ensure that our words and actions do not reinforce the inequality between the sexes.
At a broader level, says Reifferscheid, politicians and policymakers must make women’s equality a central focus of governance, to set societal standards that put women on the same level as men. We men are not all potential rapists.
But we owe it to women to give them the value that is their due, as equals to men in every way — except perhaps when it comes to arm-wrestling and peeing your name in the snow.
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Hmmm...making such an absolutist statement is akin to saying all women are emotional trainwrecks. Again, a person's character, be them male or female, is a combination of nature vs. nurture. If most biological components cooperate, I'm inclined to think that boys become good men through parental modeling. The first part, the genetic/physiological aspect, may be where things go awry, particularly with psychological pathology.
ReplyDeleteCase in point: Two night ago, a male patient presented as a threat to self. Through the history and physical, his affect was depressed, dejected, hopeless. He claimed that his life had been ruined since childhood. Naturally, my internal response was compassion. What had happened to him?
Part of his workup included a drug screening since he supposedly "overdosed" prior to arrival. While I explained the procedure to him, he just looked at me with wide, searching eyes. When I started documented on his chart, I read that he'd been incarcerated. For what? Throughout the night, I'd look up to find him watching the nurses and me, but his psychological history allowed me to dismiss it. That, and I just felt so sorry for him. I was drawn into his story and his pain.
And that's exactly the emotions he wanted to play on. The man was a twice-convicted, registered sex offender who had been sentenced to 37 years in prison, paroled after 5. He preyed on the innocent and performed ghastly acts of rape, battery, and stalking of women and children. And his demeanor was meant to be the victim. That's how he made someone his own.
Obviously, the experience made me think of this article. Though not regularly conscious of this disparity, sometimes it does creep over me, the sense that someone could overpower me, the fear of violence that could be done to me. Always in the back of my head when running in the dark or travelling alone in Africa or driving late at night is "Am I safe?" I'm sure men consider such things, but I doubt that they consider that someone could violate them in such a way that could destroy them, even destroy a part of them that was made for the highest expression of love.
But I do believe in good men. And I think good men can produce more good men by changing biology and society.