At least, this is what we've been conditioned to think when we hear the word "rape." We think of a male perpetrator, a female victim, and forced, probably violent, penis-in-vagina sex. But this is wrong, and picturing rape with these specific details is incredibly damaging to everyone. Like most things that are completely horrible, rape is hard to talk about. But we have to. We are doing a disservice to everyone - both potential penetrators and victims and current survivors - when we talk about rape with one narrow definition. One week into my training to become a rape crisis counselor, and I've already had my definition of rape, which I thought was quite advanced, challenged and corrected.
One of the most interesting things to come up has been how men are conditioned by society and the media to rape women through tools other than violence - tools like coercion and alcohol, and how to many men, their use of these tools has been so condoned and normalized by the world around them that they use them to rape women who they respect and want to be good to. This post is about men who rape unintentionally, who want to be good and get consent but have been so affected by our society's rape culture that they don't even recognize their actions as rape.
Please note, this is not all people who rape - there are many perpetrators who rape with full knowledge that what they are doing is rape and do it anyway. Those sorts of people need something different to stop them from raping. This post is about the population of men who want to have consensual sex and rape mainly due to lack of education on how to properly ask for consent. I'm hoping that this post will help more of these sorts of men learn how to do better.
