Boys Will Be Boys

by Clementine Ford

  This matters not just because rape is real but because rapists are real. They have real lives with real friends, real jobs and real families. And they walk among us.

  In 2015, the circus performer and comedian Adrienne Truscott began touring her phenomenal (and phenomenally successful) show Asking For It: A one-lady rape about comedy. In it, she launches an excoriating attack on rape culture and the famous men who’ve abused their positions to, well, abuse women. Men like Bill Cosby, Daniel Tosh and Woody Allen. The first time I saw it, I didn’t know whether to laugh hysterically or cry. Some women in the audience did both.

  Afterwards, Adrienne and I had a couple of beers outside and talked about the content. She told me about the time she sat in a college class listening to her tutor share some statistics on sexual violence. To a roomful of bored or impassive students, he reiterated the statistic that one in five women will experience sexual violence in their lifetimes.

  ‘Don’t you care about this?’ he asked his students. ‘Don’t you have anything to say about it?!’

  ‘I’ve got something to say,’ Adrienne declared, looking around the room. ‘I wanna know which one of y’all raped us.’

  It’s a brilliant point, and it’s how we should start reframing the dialogue around sexual violence. Discussion that fixates on the victims and survivors only succeeds in erasing the perpetrators. If the majority of perpetrators are known to their victims, it stands to reason that they move in the same communities we do. And if university students in particular are at risk of being sexually assaulted (which they are), then the question is an essential one to ask: Which one of you raped us?

  Here’s some frightening data for you. In 2002, academics David Lisak and Paul M. Miller published their paper ‘Repeat rape and multiple offending among undetected rapists’ in the peer-reviewed journal Violence and Victims. The pair posed the following four questions to a sample group of 1882 male college students with a median age of 26.5:

  (1) Have you ever been in a situation where you tried, but for various reasons did not succeed, in having sexual intercourse with an adult by using or threatening to use physical force (twisting their arm, holding them down etc.) if they did not cooperate?

  (2) Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, even though they did not want to, because they were too intoxicated (on alcohol or drugs) to resist your sexual advances (e.g. removing their clothes)?

  (3) Have you ever had sexual intercourse with an adult when they didn’t want to because you used or threatened to use physical force (twisting their arm; holding them down etc.) if they didn’t cooperate?

  (4) Have you ever had oral sex with an adult when they didn’t want to because you used or threatened to use physical force (twisting their arm; holding them down etc.) if they didn’t cooperate?

  Of the 1882 students, 120 admitted to rape or attempting to rape. A third of these (44) admitted to only one assault, but the remaining 76 outed themselves as repeat offenders who were collectively responsible for 439 rapes or attempted rapes—an average of 5.8 each.

  Lisak and Miller also confirmed their theory that rapists were responsible for more violence generally, particularly violence involving an intimate partner, the physical or sexual abuse of a child and sexual assaults other than attempted or completed rape. Repeat rapists were more likely to be violent overall, accounting for 28 percent of the reported violence (more than 1000 out of almost 4000 incidents) across the entire 1882-man sample.

  In 2009, Stephanie McWhorter conducted a similar longitudinal study that involved a sample of 1146 newly enlisted men in the US Navy, tracing their behaviour back to the age of fourteen. Of this sample, 144 men (13 percent) admitted to attempting or completing a rape. However, once again the much larger sample of men within this group of rapists (71 percent) admitted to being repeat offenders, clocking an average of 6.36 assaults each. Together, they were responsible for just over 800 rapes.

  Across both studies, the majority of admitted rapes involved intoxication of the victim. A quarter involved force and approximately one-sixth were a combination of the two. Crucially, McWhorter’s research indicated that men who grow up to be rapists are likely to start in adolescence.

  In 2014, researchers Sarah Edwards, Kathryn A. Bradshaw and Verlin B. Hinsz published a study out of North Dakota titled ‘Denying rape but endorsing forceful intercourse: Exploring differences among responders’. The study was limited in terms of numbers and demographics (only seventy-three participants had their answers analysed, and these men were all white and heterosexual), but it appears to correlate with the findings of Lisak, Miller and McWhorter. Rather than querying criminality, the study looked at the language of intention. Specifically, what are the circumstances in which men would cop to rape?

  The findings were bleak but unsurprising. A third of participants admitted they would rape a woman if they could guarantee it would remain a secret and they would suffer no consequences. However, they would only admit this when it wasn’t called rape. Instead, the question was framed as ‘intentions to force a woman into sexual intercourse’. A smaller percentage—13.6 to be precise—were willing to admit the same when it was explicitly referred to as rape. Researchers found that men who admitted freely to rape intentions had ‘angry and unfriendly’ attitudes towards women, such as thinking women were manipulative or deceitful (both of which are feminine traits insisted on by some of the more vigorously misogynistic men who find their home in groups like Blokes Advice). The men who admitted to intentions of force were only marginally better, displaying attitudes to the researchers that indicated a ‘callous sexism’ towards women.

  These aren’t definitive studies, but they provide us with a good starting point for assessing not just the attitude of rapists in our society but also how they are formed. Sexism is not peripheral to the crime of rape—it is central. And making light of violence while elevating the superiority and hypermasculinity of men encourages the perpetrators hiding within those communities to believe that they’re in the right. Some might argue that three studies aren’t enough to form a definitive picture of sexual violence, and they’re probably right. But they help to illustrate part of the broader problem. Even within this relatively small sample of research studies, there were still more than 1200 incidents in which a human being was subjected to rape or attempted rape. The sample might be insignificant, but the trauma endured by those 1200 people isn’t—and yes, we should be disturbed by it.

  When we talk about rape, no matter what the context might be, we have to assume that we’re also talking TO rapists. Most rapists don’t fall into the category of Alleyway Attacker. Most rapists probably wouldn’t even consider themselves rapists so much as opportunists. And I’ve got a news flash for you—a Facebook group of 300,000 men definitely has rapists in it. When these men see their online pals in groups like Blokes Advice and Yeah The Boys sitting around and laughing heartily at sexual violence, rape and violence against women, what does it confirm to them about the validity of their own behaviour? When they see men brainstorming increasingly violent and ‘hilarious’ ways to humiliate and degrade women, talking about ‘2 holes’, ‘whores’ and ‘c—s’, what do they think about how other men express misogyny? When sons hear their fathers make these same jokes, what does it tell them about masculinity and the kinds of men they should be—the kind of men that it’s okay to be?

  I’ll tell you what they don’t think. They don’t think, ‘There’s something wrong with me.’

  I can yell all this until the cows come home (on time, please—we know what happens to girls who stay out too late), but the critique of misogynist humour as a bonding mechanism always results in spirited declarations of all the supposed good these kinds of groups do. Blokes Advice in particular is often defended as providing a safe space for men struggling with depression to reach out and get support. No one could fault men seeking help for the mental health issues that traditional notions of masculinity have instructed they repress, but that shouldn�
�t come at the expense of decency and respect for women. Believe it or not, feminists welcome men deconstructing the shame inflicted on them for having feelings. What we object to is the cavalier dismissal of women’s mental health alongside it. Survivors of rape and domestic violence experience an elevated risk of PTSD, depression and anxiety. Why should they respect a space that claims on the one hand to be saving the lives of sad men while doing it at the expense of women’s own sanity and wellbeing? There’s nothing wrong with a masculinity that forms bonds between men and challenges harmful ideas around stoicism and fragility—but that masculinity becomes toxic the moment it relies on misogyny as a means for that connection to occur.

  These attitudes aren’t excusable. Some of the men who indulge in them so gleefully may just be childish and ignorant, but there are others who harbour a genuine hatred of women. It’s impossible for women to know which is which, so the only logical approach is for us to treat all of them with suspicion. And yet, this self-preservation is consistently treated as more offensive and dangerous than the behaviour that spawned it in the first place. Why are women expected to laugh at jokes that make light not just of the violence we are at greater risk of experiencing but that many of us have already experienced? And why is it that the men who are so loud about women needing to relax and stop taking everything so personally are the ones so catastrophically incapable of self-reflection and humility?

  Laughing at sexual violence isn’t a harmless activity, nor should it be excused because ‘well, at least men are chatting about their feelings’. The fact is, you don’t know whether the person who loves to ponder the ways he might ‘humorously’ rape a woman is just a terrible comedian or a serial offender. But given the force with which women are condescendingly advised to practise a more sensible awareness of our safety, can you really blame us for viewing with deep suspicion and fear the men who bond with one another over jokes about harming us?

  Until we develop a fail-safe way to identify sexual predators, all we have to go on is people’s behaviour. If you don’t want to be seen as a potential rapist, maybe the first step would be to stop minimising the criminal action of rape because you think it’s an easy way to get a cheap laugh.

  We aren’t powerless against these forces. One of the practical measures we can take is to exercise our rights as consumers to oppose the use of violence and even just basic sexism to sell products. We don’t have to put up with it, and we have more power to create change than we might imagine. Think about the protest movement against Wicked Campers, a business that had long held the dubious reputation of being Australia’s most feral transport hire company. Popular among backpackers and people who don’t mind looking like total cockspanners in public, the fleet was infamous for boasting slogans like ‘In every princess there is a little slut who wants to try it just once’ and ‘Nice legs . . . what time do they open?’.

  The Advertising Standards Bureau had handed down rulings on Wicked Campers before, but they were essentially impossible to enforce. But at the start of 2017, after a long and sustained public campaign against the company, the Queensland state government passed legislation that would ‘ban offensive and indecent advertisements’ on vans and vehicles. The new legislation didn’t explicitly target Wicked Campers, but it did ensure that companies like them who refused to comply with ASB rulings within fourteen days would risk having their vehicles deregistered. It was the first time legislative measures had been taken to combat the rampant sexism skeezing its way around the country, and it was seen as a huge win for campaigners who’d fought to have the vehicles removed from circulation.

  Sometimes, just having the conversations can be a good place to start, not only for the people struggling to find the funny but also the people angrily defending it. Figuring out who or what a joke’s punchline is aimed at isn’t just about showing off your progressive credentials—it’s also about learning how to tell smarter jokes.

  When a company like Wicked Campers puts a van on the road with the slogan ‘Fat girls are harder to kidnap’ or ‘I can already imagine the gaffer tape on your mouth’, the question has to be asked: what’s the joke supposed to be? In a country that bears the legacy of Anita Cobby (a twenty-six-year-old nurse who, in 1986, was kidnapped by a carful of men who then gang-raped, tortured and murdered her before abandoning her body in a paddock), not to mention the Ivan Milat backpacker murders, what could possibly be funny about the image of someone restrained against their will in the back of a van? In a world where women are abducted, bundled into vehicles and then imprisoned in rape dungeons for years on end, who looks at a white van and thinks, Let’s brighten up this wagon with some light-hearted one-liners about rape!

  If you have to explain the joke, it’s either not as funny as you think it is or you’ve picked the wrong audience. But if you can’t explain the joke in reasonable terms—and by that I mean provide an actual argument for how the joke fits together and what truths about society it draws on rather than just scream but it’s funny!—then perhaps you’ve misjudged its right to sit in the humour oeuvre.

  The kinds of misogynist ‘jokes’ scrawled across Wicked Campers’ vans or shared in groups boasting tens of thousands of members or told at the pub or on university lawns or around family dinner tables or private political functions or in male dominated comedy rooms and which are then defended by the (mostly) men who angrily defend their right to find them funny cannot be divorced from the reality of men’s violence against women, because this violence is happening every minute of every day. And if you’re joking not just about people over whom you have power but also about the violent, degrading practices to which that power ensures you yourself will never be subjected, you are not laughing at or creating clever comedy. You are revelling in your own privilege, and perpetuating the normalisation of violence against people who have less social and political capital than you.

  And we are right to consider you a risk to our safety.

  In Writing the Male Character (1982), the Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood recounts the time she asked a male friend why men feel threatened by women:

  ‘I mean,’ I said, ‘men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on average a lot more money and power.’

  ‘They’re afraid women will laugh at them,’ he said. ‘Undercut their world view.’

  Later, she posed the same question to women in a poetry seminar she was giving: ‘Why do women feel threatened by men?’

  ‘They’re afraid of being killed,’ came the reply.

  * The journalist responsible knew that the ‘fan’ in question was a friend of mine, because they previously sat next to each other when they worked at the same media outlet. A photograph of the ironic inscription had been posted on her private Instagram account months before, and then mysteriously ‘discovered’ by her former colleague immediately after I announced I had signed a contract to write this book. Curiously, she was never contacted for a quote and her relationship to me was never qualified for the website’s audience.

  * I’ve quoted this insult a few times in this book, but I wasn’t sure if I should at first because it’s such an ugly, ableist word. In the end, I decided it was important to show that this kind of hate speech is as much a part of the vocabulary of these young men as words like ‘cunt’, ‘whore’, ‘bitch’ and ‘slut’. We should be just as disgusted by the widespread use of ableism as we are by misogyny, and identifying its practice is one of the first steps.

  11

  ASKING FOR IT

  ‘You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me.’

  So wrote the survivor at the centre of yet another college-based sexual assault, in a powerful victim impact statement that briefly shone a spotlight on the issue of rape culture for a global audience. Within days of it being published by Buzzfeed, the woman’s statement had been shared more than twelve million times. It was blistering, precise and devastating.

  For fellow survivors, her words were all too famil
iar.

  The woman was addressing a young man named Brock Turner, who was charged in 2015 with the felony assault of her as she lay unconscious outside a Stanford University party. During the assault, Turner removed her clothes and digitally penetrated her with such force that she was left with ‘significant trauma’ to her genitalia. Later, the woman’s impact statement would reveal that the medical examiners had found a mixture of debris, including pine needles, in her vagina.

  There were witnesses to the crime: two Swedish graduate students riding past on their bicycles interrupted the assault after realising the young woman lying beneath Turner was unconscious. Turner tried to flee, but the Swedes held him down until the police arrived.

  During the course of the subsequent trial, Turner’s family and friends described him in glowing terms as a young man whose real crime was that he had consumed too much alcohol. A letter of support from Turner’s father lamented the young man’s lack of appetite since the trial began, imploring the judge not to punish him for what amounted to ‘twenty minutes of action’. Media outlets couldn’t resist mentioning Turner’s status as a champion swimmer, their stories illustrated by photographs of the young white man smiling. In news cycle time, it took an entire ice age for media to publish his mugshot (a move that has as much to do with white supremacist culture as it does rape culture—think of the photographs these same outlets choose to publish of the young black men murdered by police officers in the United States).