My experience with a "potential rapist."

[Orrex]

Last edited Sun Jan 11, 2015, 10:23 PM - Edit history (1)

I ran track in high school. In my senior year I was in pretty good shape but was of slight build and didn't have much power in my upper body. A good friend of mine graduated a year earlier. She excelled in the "strength" events--shot put, discuss and javelin—and in fact held the school's records in each. She was considerably overweight and not conventionally attractive. She was also shy and a bit of a geek, which is part of why we were friends.

While on a visit home from college, she came to the school to watch the track team practicing, and afterward she offered to give me a ride home in her VW Bug. We stopped by McDonalds and drove to some back road to chat and catch up.

During that conversation she lamented that she had trouble making friends, that she had never kissed a guy, and that she didn't understand why guys didn't give her a chance even though she was kind and funny and smart. She expressed feelings of profound loneliness, and she confessed that she felt closer to me than to any other guy.

She paused and looked away for a moment, and in that moment I had an ugly and entirely unfair thought: she out-massed me by at least 70 pounds, and she was much stronger than I was. If she had tried to force herself on me, I absolutely wouldn't have been able to stop her.

Let me stress that she hated violence and was as gentle a person as you could hope to meet. I had no reason to think that she would ever try to harm me in any way, nor has she ever done so. I was ashamed even to think of it, and she would have been deeply hurt if I'd revealed it to her.

Still, I have to admit that I thought of it.

The experience was very brief, lasting just a few seconds, but it utterly transformed my thinking in a way that lingers to this day. I don't pretend to know how a woman feels when a strange man passes too closely on a dark sidewalk, or when a guy makes unwelcome physical contact or stands too near or leers in a way that makes her uncomfortable. Certainly I don't know what it's like to be constantly aware of potential threats in seemingly innocuous settings.

But for a moment I felt what I believe was a similar (though lesser) anxiety, and I think that it helps me understand why men should quit whining about the term "potential rapist." It's not a commentary on the individual male as much as it's a reasonable description of the awareness of real possible danger.[hr]

[ismnotwasm]

1. Thanks for sharing

[Orrex]

3. Thanks.

In the wake of the Rodgers killings, I've seen "potential rapist" thrown around a lot.

I admit that I don't "get" the whole of the gender discussion, but I like to think that I get this part of it.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. Thank you, Orrex. K&R

Peace.

[wryter2000]

4. Thank you

You understand completely.

[angstlessk]

5. Men can be both seduced and raped

The male psyche that must not reject a women's advance makes him vulnerable to rape

[gollygee]

6. This is a frustrating conversation always

when people don't understand it. Obviously not all men would potentially rape, but yeah if we don't know a man, we don't know if he's a rapist or not. We can't tell. They don't have a different colored nose or anything like that. If all rapists had blue noses, it would be easy to tell and then we wouldn't have to treat men without blue noses differently. We could focus just on the men with blue noses and life might very well be easier for the rest of you.

Someone just said to me that it's like avoiding all African Americans because they might commit crime, but most crime isn't even committed by African Americans. How can that be seen to be similar? In one case, I'd be avoiding a group of people stereotyped to commit crime, and in the other I'd be avoiding a group of people which includes the people who actually do commit somewhere around 99% of rape.

Obviously I don't continue to avoid men once I feel I can trust them, or I never would have gotten married. But of course married women get raped by their husbands too. Rape is a major threat to women, and it really frustrates me to see people take it lightly.

[Squinch]

7. And imagine being in that situation on a daily basis or more often. And once in a while, the person

across from you is not benign and you have to deal with them or get away from them, or be hurt by them.

And that goes on for years and years.

[Orrex]

8. Yeah, I hoped to convey some of that

The flash of insight was tremendously educational, and it made me aware that women routinely experience something similar with, as you note, less benign figures all the time.

My brief experience didn't make me feel that feeling, but it made me aware that it exists in a way that I might not otherwise have grasped so readily.