This week I happened upon a news article about a girl who accused her boyfriend (well, I suppose he's now her ex-boyfriend) of rape, and got him convicted. They were having sex—consensual sex according to both of them—when she said, "I should go now," or "I have to go home," or something equally vague, and instead of, um, removing himself, he "kept going." The judges in this case (the California Supreme Court no less, so this isn't the case of a lone dunderhead at the bench, but six stupid people all working in unison) decided that "not stopping quickly enough" constitutes rape. I, of course, was incredulous.
How fast the world is changing! When I was young, rape meant that some bastard had grabbed a woman, torn her clothes off (or threatened her with physical harm), and penetrated her. Then, later, Canadian society acknowledged that rape could occur between husband and wife. Still later, we concluded that rape didn't have to be violent: that threats were enough, that fear was enough to conclude that the woman didn't want sex. Then we decided that power could be involved, too, so that a boss asking his secretary nicely for some sex could be considered rape because she was in no position to refuse. Then we extended this to all women, so that any woman can now decide the day after that even though she consented to sex, she really didn't want it to have happened and so it must have been rape because maybe she "felt pressured." Perhaps. (See my response to Tisdall's letter for my ideas on how women rewrite history.) Now, in 2003, we have a "rape" in which the woman consented, was in the middle of "doing it," and changed her mind. Not only that, but she didn't even state clearly anything like, "Get off of me! Stop! I've changed my mind." No, instead she said, "I have to go now."
Come to think of it, I wouldn't even agree that it's rape if the woman agreed of her own free will to have sex and then changed her mind in the middle of the act and was very direct and convincing about it. I mean, how far will we go in infantilizing women? How far will we go with the law toward saying that women have no responsibility, can't make up their minds, and don't need to express themselves clearly from the outset? This isn't rape by force. It isn't rape by threat. It isn't rape by coercion. It isn't even rape of a subordinate by a superior. It's rape by stupidity: her stupidity. She's not treating this guy like a human being; she's treating him like an amusement park ride that she can turn on and off whenever she chooses. Now, it would be bad enough to announce to the world that you didn't want sex with this guy because he didn't pull his willy out when he was given the hint, but she went one further and took it to court. That, in my books, makes her both an idiot and an asshole.
Mulling over this story, I thought of women in other countries, countries in which they don't have Big Daddy Government looking after them and protecting their honour. Other countries, including Mrs. Buster's home country, are peopled by women who know how to handle men. They know how to say "No" and mean it. Sure, they're protected by their fathers, brothers, and neighbours, but these women also know how to read men and how to control them, when psychological control is possible. These women want rape laws, to be sure, but only to cover those cases in which men turn physical and can no longer be psychologically controlled. I doubt that any of the women in Mrs. Buster's home country are interested in vague concepts like "date rape." My impression is that they consider any woman who can't handle her man, or who puts herself in a situation in which she loses control of him, to be a loser. I noticed this in Italy: Italian women had very little use for American women who made passes at Italian men and were then horrified that the men didn't stop their advances when commanded to do so. Italian women know how to handle their men; American women are clueless in this regard.
In short, Canadian, American, Australian, and English women need draconian and sweeping rape laws because they have no idea how to say "No" to men and have it stick. They have no idea how to stand up for themselves. Those that do try typically go overboard and take Kung Fu lessons when all that they really need is a particular gesture, facial expression, and a way of saying "No" that makes him want to back off. Since North American women have no idea how to look after themselves, they look to the government and the courts to do it for them. So, some clueless college kid who makes a clumsy pass, rather than being told to stop it in a way that gets his attention, instead gets hauled into court and branded a "sexual harrasser" for life. Charming.
I've mentioned elsewhere that when a woman tells you "No means no!" what she's really doing is pushing all of the responsibility for self-restraint onto your shoulders. She is trying to arrange things so that she can do whatever she likes, but you have been ordered to control yourself no matter what. Because it's difficult to say "No," particularly in an intimate moment, and because nobody has ever told her that sometimes you have to do difficult things, she leaves you with a standing order to practice self-restraint so that she doesn't have to control her emotions and be smart. This is key: she has never learned how and when to say "No" and make it stick, so she just washes her hands of the whole thing and puts you on the job. Back in the old days, women would bring along a brother as a chaperone to make sure that you didn't get out of line. These days, Western men are so whipped that they'll play chaperone to themselves. They watch themselves to make sure that they don't get out of line; all the women have to do is ask. Is that pussy-whipped, or what?
Mind you, this doesn't mean that women are restraining themselves, too. This doesn't mean that women are controlling their bitchy sides, their blaming and shaming sides. Neither are there any laws to protect a man from a woman who turns psycho on him and starts pounding away at his self-esteem in order to gain emotional control. No, men must protect themselves so that women can be free to be as kind or as bitchy as they like. It was called women's liberation after all, wasn't it?
So, the legal machinery is designed so that men must control themselves and not hurt women (where women get to decide what constitutes "hurt"), but there is nothing to guarantee that women will not hurt men (and it's considered laughable that men could be able to define what constitutes "hurt" in this sense). Women have someone looking out for them—the state. Men have to look after themselves. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
After all of this, you may be wondering why this piece is under my masculine attitudes section rather than the feminine attitudes section. I put it here because after thinking about all this, I hit upon why I am so upset at feminism and women in general.
I'm just like Canadian women who can't look after themselves and don't know how to say "No," except that in my case I never learned how to say "No" to women. I could speculate for pages on why, but for some reason I learned that even if women become unreasonable, bitchy, or downright vicious, the thing to do was to be nice to them and hope that they change. Somewhere I learned to be gallant, to do what my mate wanted me to do, and if she became unreasonable and started ordering me around, to say, "Oh, I don't mind," even as I did mind. I never learned to tell the nice girls that I didn't want to do this or that, or that I considered some request or other unreasonable. I never learned to tell the bitchy women to push off. I never learned to tell the nice girls, when they turned bitchy, that they were being bitchy and to stop it. So, like women, I tried to push the responsibility onto my partner's shoulders: "I don't know how to restrain you when you get out of hand, so you will have to restrain yourself." I was, in effect, trying to pull the same trick that the girl who says, "No means no!" is pulling.
So, as you can see, I was—and I am still—like the girl who feels cheated after a mildly unpleasant night with a guy who she feels pushed her into sex. She let some guy talk her into something she didn't want to do, and she resents him for it. I let women—nice women, bitchy women, and every woman in between—push me around and tell me what to do, and I don't stand up for myself. In that sense, I deserve what I get. As well, I often got the worst women, simply because like a traditional woman I didn't proposition the ones that I liked, but instead waited to see what would happen or who would come my way. Sure, I met some nice women, but I think that I went out with more than my share of bitches, psychos, and losers. It's simple logic: witches, bitches, and crazy ladies are wandering through the population, being to various degrees witchy, bitchy, and crazy to the men they meet. At the outset they're nice, but then they turn on the bitchiness or the insanity to see if he objects. Sane men who know how to handle women won't take this crap, and the bitch is out on her ass and back in circulation. However, when she meets a "nice guy" like me, and she tries being bitchy and I don't object, she knows she's found another patsy who will tolerate her outrageous behaviour and come back for more. Of course, even "nice guys" eventually tire of being whipping boys and leave, but they're the only ones who will stay for any length of time.
Not all of my ex-girlfriends were rotten or nuts, but a high enough percentage that I can't help but think that a lot of them were rejected by sane men, went on trolling about until they found me, and stayed with me because I would tolerate their bullshit. If the bitches stick only to "nice guys," but nice girls stick to "nice guys" and to guys who know how to look after themselves, then statistically speaking a "nice guy" will end up with more jerks and bitches, and I sure did.
A wise friend of mine once told me when I was dating Mrs. Buster that the best way to test a woman to see if she is worth marrying is to "Tell her no." At the time I didn't understand what he meant, but maybe now I do. If I had learned to say "No" to women: to stick up for myself, and make them respect my "No" or boot them out if they didn't, then I would probably have done far better. I would have dumped the bitches and crazies who flipped out when I told them to stop being bitchy or crazy, and stayed with the reasonable women who could accept that I had my own ideas, and would discuss plans and ideas with me like an adult instead of throwing a tantrum like a spoiled little child.¹
Sadly, my options are more limited now. All I can do now is see if I can turn a spoiled child into a mature woman by learning to stick up for myself. That, and warn other guys who are like me not to be afraid to tell her "No" and lose her, because if you lose her because you expressed your own wishes then she was a bitch or a crazy and you're better off without her.
Oh, and to all of those women out there who think that the state should protect them—not just against violent brutes but also against clueless guys who just don't get the message—maybe you could adopt some of these same principles: learn to stick up for yourself and to communicate clearly and forcefully with the opposite sex, and thus make the world a better place for you and for them.
