This list of so-called rape myths was compiled by John Edward Hamlin, a mangina academic from the University of Minnesota Duluth who believes in the gender pay gap as well as rape culture.
The list at this link was first compiled in 2001 and was updated or at least modified on March 3, 2005, so here I am counting the latter as its publication date. (I have not corrected his typo in the last line).
If you thought the Duluth model was insane, welcome to the world of the male feminist. Okay, lets go through this list of so-called myths:
Numero uno: Rape is sex.
Yes and no. Let us define rape as an act of violence, even if it is effected by blackmail or coercion, that’s fair enough, but rape is not always a life-threatening experience, and strangely what some women today consider rape is not always an unpleasant one. This is because so many especially young women have been brainwashed into believing consensual sex is rape. Any man who has sex with a woman who has consumed any amount of alcohol is in serious danger of being branded a rapist, even if at the time she initiated the sex and screamed for more. There have been many such cases, some of which can be found herein.
Women incite men to rape.
Does anyone really believe this? Unless we are talking about a woman who participates in a rape – a woman as depraved as Karla Homolka or Rosemary West – this one is a no-brainer. Having said that, people of a certain fundamentalist religious persuasion consider women showing too much flesh to be little better than prostitutes or worse. As for me, I am a lifelong atheist.
There is a “right way” to respond to a rape situation.
Meaning of course there is no right way to respond. Yes, but who actually says this? As with any other trauma, trouble or problem in life, an individual response is needed. Clearly this can be difficult especially if the victim is attacked suddenly. Most genuine victims fight back, and this is usually the right thing to do. When Valerie Storie was raped at gunpoint by James Hanratty, she did not resist; as she had just seen him murder her lover, that was understandable. On the other hand, when Chima Benson woke up in the small hours to find a stranger standing over her, she did. She took a beating, but her attacker had already murdered two women, so clearly she did the right thing. A woman who fights her attacker may scare him off, or even beat him, especially if she hits – or in Chima’s case – bites him where it hurts.
A victim should be discouraged from dwelling on the rape.
Yes, she should. We should all attempt to move forward whatever tragedies befall us. Men as well as women have allowed far more trivial things than acts of violence to eat away at or even destroy them.
Support from family members is essential to the victim’s recovery.
Yes and no. People being nice to us is generally preferable to either indifference or contempt, whether or not we have suffered adversity.
Rape trauma syndrome is a transient problem. Most healthy people will return to a normal state of functioning within a year.
Rape trauma syndrome doesn’t exist, dummy!
Rapists are non-white. Rapists are lower class. Rapists are “Criminal types”.
The rapist profile is an able-bodied or relatively able-bodied male between the ages of about 16 and 50. There are exceptions, and one would expect men from certain backgrounds to be less likely to rape than others. When was the last time you heard of an Amish serial killer?
Men can’t be raped.
The words buggery and sodomy were used at one time, but now when a man is sodomised against his will, the act is generally referred to as rape. I have no problem with this new terminology, and neither should you. In the United States, sodomy can also refer to forced oral sex. In recent years (I am writing this January 2018) anti-rape activists (so-called) have been exaggerating the extent of sexual offences against men in a pathetic attempt to garner male support for their unremitting attack on due process. The rape of men is comparatively rare.
Incest is rare.
Incest is extremely rare! Ignore his citation, ditto all the contrived statistics he adduces. Most allegations of incest are made by adults and are the result of either recovered memories or childhood amnesia. A full discussion of either would take us too far afield, suffice it to say many young women who have gone into therapy for eating disorders and the like have come out believing they were raped by their own fathers, an extreme case being that of Nicole Althaus.
When we remember our childhood later in life, we tend to confabulate. A memory of a pleasant sensation, perhaps a mother or a nurse rubbing cream into a young girl’s leg, transmogrifies into something sinister.
Sexual assaults are rare deviations and affect few people. After all, no one I know has been raped.
He is wilfully confusing sexual assaults and rape. Sexual assault (indecent assault) is obviously more common than rape, but can often be the result of some over-enthusiastic male misreading the signals. If a guy is “snogging” a woman and his hand wanders a bit too far, at one time she would have removed it, or in an extreme case slapped him. Nowadays she is just as likely to cry sexual assault. Of course, if instead she comes on too strong and puts her hand down the front of his trousers, he is unlikely to react in similar fashion, even if he considers her too forward.
A claim of indecent assault can arise out of an accidental touch, and if a guy is really unlucky he may end up being convicted and his livelihood or even his life destroyed. Rape is an order of magnitude and then some more serious; actual rapes are fortunately rare. Hamlin goes on to claim that many sexual assault (rape) victims block the experience from conscious memory, and that it can resurface at a later date. The reality is that some women rewrite consensual sexual acts as rape, sometimes wilfully, Rodney Anderson (entry for December 4, 2017) being an extreme case, indeed but for the exculpatory text messages, this kid could have ended up serving a heavy gaol sentence for an imaginary crime.
Women often make false reports of rape.
Having read this far, you will realise just how common false allegations of rape really are. Again, the statistics are misleading.
There is a fair amount of repetition on this list; later he says it is a myth that women “cry” rape, which is the same claim worded differently.
[Note: This idiot may enjoy repeating himself but I have better ways to manage my time, so I have not commented on every single repetition].
You can tell a rapist by the way he looks.
Obviously not, but we have all been in uncomfortable situations or in the company of people we don’t trust. Many people who know what they are talking about – police officers, for example – advise us to avoid such situations and such people, but when they do so in the context of sexual assault, they are accused of victim blaming.
Women fantasize about being raped.
Yes, they do, but with some massive caveats, check out what I wrote when I set up this site.
His claim further down that women secretly enjoy being raped is not quite the same as the claim they fantasise about it, but is near enough, so we will ignore that.
A man cannot rape his wife.
This is repeated further down the list as It is impossible for a husband to sexually assault his wife, so this answers both claims.
The sisterhood love this one. They claim for example that in England it was legal for a man to rape his wife until 1991. The truth is not as simple as that. Although there was no crime of marital rape, it has never been legal for a man to inflict gross violence on his wife, and there is case law on this going back to at least the 19th Century.
Only “bad” women get raped.
And God always rewards the good while he punishes the wicked. Only an idiot would claim good women are never raped. Having said that, certain types of women are more likely to be raped or even murdered than others. Prostitutes and drug addicts are often targeted by serial killers because of their lifestyles and because they are less likely to be missed. It is not necessary to make any value judgments to realise the half-truth of this so-called myth.
Rape only occurs outside and at night.
Says who? Again, be serious, dude.
Sexual assault is an impulsive, spontaneous act.
All manner of crimes may be spontaneous; rape is either a planned crime or an opportunistic one, a spontaneous rapist is unlikely to remain at liberty for long.
Sexual assault usually occurs between strangers.
Rape – genuine rape – usually involves an attack by a stranger or by someone known to the victim only tenuously. Most other cases of reported rape are REGRET SEX.
Rape only happens to young attractive women.
Again, only an idiot would believe this.
Rape is a crime of passion.
Another non-myth perpetuated by the sisterhood. Rape is often claimed to be weaponised sex, it could arguably result from sexual frustration, but no rational person equates it with passion.
If a person doesn’t “fight back” she/he wasn’t really raped.
This has already been covered after a fashion, suffice it to say that a genuine rape is an unambiguous act, so most genuine victims (when conscious) do fight back or at the very least make their displeasure known.
Most rapists only rape one time.
Young, impulsive men, teenagers, etc, may. Like serial murder, serial rape is far from common, but there are such men out there, and they need to be stopped.
Women who are drunk are willing to engage in any kind of sexual activity.
Alcohol lowers personal inhibitions, which is not always and only a bad thing. Clearly a woman who is stoned out of her head cannot consent, but mere drunkenness does not vitiate consent. Having said that, it is advisable for men to stay away from drunk women because they are trouble. Personally, I have always found drunken women disgusting, ditto outright sluts, but many especially younger men who do not share this revulsion end up repenting at leisure. Don’t you be one of them.
As long as children remember to stay away from strangers, they are in no danger of being assaulted.
His response here is that the young are usually sexually assaulted by acquaintances, caretakers and family members. So perhaps they should stay away from everyone?
Most rapes involve black men raping white women.
What does the Chinese Government say? Idiot.
Back To False Rape Timeline
And his response: Rape is experienced by the victims as an act of violence. It is a life-threatening experience.