Male Stereotypes and Male Rape

This topic will be covered again in the future with fun things like statistics and maths and legal definitions and sources. But for now, I'm going to be talking about some non-quantifiable aspects that bother me. I will be using some "grown up" words so... yeah.

We all know that men can rape women. We know that men can rape men. What people don't seem to understand is that women can rape men - not just boys, grown up men. They can also rape women.

Women can rape. I know, it's a shocker given the way that some people would like to act like women have only ever been the victims of and never the perpetrators of injustice. But, honestly, I feel that if equality of any sort is to be achieved in this world, it has to be done by acknowledging that there isn't a race, gender, orientation, etc that is completely "saintly" or completely "demonic".

But moving on from there.

I want to talk about the perceptions of female-on-male rape, and how the male stereotypes effect it.

What are some well known male stereotypes? Well, the first ones that come to mind are that men are strong, men are violent, and that men are constantly horny and ready for sex. We can see how this lends itself to the idea that men are rapists - it also lends itself to the idea that men are too strong to get raped and that they always welcome sex so, not rape.

I hate the "men are strong" one. Not all men are strong. Some girls are stronger. And no matter how strong a guy is, he'll react the same way as a girl to a date-rape drug. So, really, it's completely irrelevant to the idea of rape.

Now for the idea that men are always horny and ready for sex. Let's assume for one moment that this is true. Then why don't guys sleep with everything? Why do they reject some girls? Why don't they all use prostitutes? Why don't straight guys take sex offered by gay men? Why don't gay men take sex offered by straight girls? It's all "sex", right?

The fact is, even if men are horny all the time, they exercise some control and choice over who they have sex with - that is, they, like women, have the right to CHOOSE who they have sex with.


And now for the biggest player in this stereotype: the penis. As most of us know, the penis gets erect when the male is aroused; however erections can also occur as a result of fear, panic, and drugs. Oh, and let's remember that it gets erect due to blood flow - so a guy could be as flaccid as anything but if the rapist were to "encourage" the blood flow, we'd have an erection present.

But I don't want to address those - I want to talk about when the guy is aroused. When he really did find his rapist attractive, before she attacked him.

How many times have we heard or read about male-on-female rapists who rationalize that his victim "wanted it"? It was only a couple of centuries ago that it was "accepted knowledge" that a woman could not have been raped if she got pregnant since pregnancy was believed to be the result of enjoyable sex and rape was not enjoyable. Basically, "if she orgasmed, she wasn't raped". Or, as Fifty Shades of Fucked Up said "you were wet, you wanted it".

It case you didn't know, an orgasm is the result of nerve endings being stimulated. So it has nothing to do with the willingness of the participants. Actually, this has been recognized as a reason why some rape victims don't report their rapists - their body betrayed them and they feel dirty and low.

But this is the same logic applied to male rape victims. "He had an erection, he must have been willing", "He went to her house, he must have been willing", "He ejaculated, he must have" - it keeps on going on.

How come it's okay for women to be attracted to a man but not want to sleep with him? Because that's all a guy's erection says - he's attracted. Maybe he's thinking about having sex with her. But that doesn't mean he wants to at that moment, if ever.

How come the media says it's okay for a woman to change her mind, but a man is apparently possessed by the "boner werewolf" is contracted to have sex by its presence?

The fact is, there is no bloody difference here. A man and a woman have the rights to be attracted to someone but not have sex with them if they choose. I'm sick to death of the idea that a man's brain is directly wired to his penis.

Because when a 'normal' person says "He had an erection - he must have been willing", it's the same as a woman's rapist saying "she wanted it".

And because, "forced sex" is rape.

Music: Graceless

Because it's pretty.

 The National - Graceless

Graceless
Is there a powder to erase this?
Is it dissolvable and tasteless?
You can't imagine how I hate this
Graceless

I'm trying, but I'm graceless
Don't have the sunny side to face this
I am invisible and weightless
You can't imagine how I hate this
Graceless

I'm trying, but I've gone
Through the glass again
Just come and find me
God loves everybody, don't remind me
I took the medicine when I went missing
Just let me hear your voice, just let me listen

Graceless
I figured out how to be faithless
But it will be a shame to waste this
You can't imagine how I hate this
Graceless

I'm trying, but I've gone
Through the glass again
Just come and find me
God loves everybody, don't remind me
I took the medicine and I went missing
Just let me hear your voice, just let me listen

All of my thoughts of you
Bullets through rock and through
Come apart at the seams
Now I know what dying means

I am not my rosy self
Left my roses on my shelf
Take the wild ones, they're my favourites
It's the side effects that save us

Grace
Put the flowers you find in a vase
If you're dead in the mind it will brighten the place
Don't let them die on the vine, it's a waste
Grace

There's a science to walking through windows
There's a science to walking through windows
There's a science to walking through windows
There's a science to walking through windows without you

All of my thoughts of you
Bullets through rock and through
Come apart at the seams
Now I know what dying means

I am not my rosy self
Left my roses on my shelf
Take the wild ones, they're my favourites
It's the side effects that save us

Grace
Put the flowers you find in a vase
If you're dead in the mind it will brighten the base
Don't let them die on the vine, it's a waste
Grace

Grace
Put the flowers you find in a vase
If you're dead in the mind it will brighten the base
Don't let them die on the vine, it's a waste
Grace

When Things Get Stressful

^_^

Almost Human

It's criminal, the way we love, the way we hate;

It's almost human...

WARNING: Once Upon A Time SPOILERS (if you're watching it)

I watch quite a few programs on TV - one of which is Once Upon A Time. It's quite an interesting program - a bunch of fairy tale characters are cursed into our world where they have no memory of their pasts and the savior (daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming) has to break the curse. In the second season the curse is broken and now they can't get back to their world or leave their town.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because of the villains of the show. They're brilliant. They take "evil" characters such as the Evil Queen, Rumpelstiltskin, Captain Hook, and they make them... believable. Human. How? Their motivations, for the most part are routed in Love.
C.S. Lewis talked of how love can go wrong without some element of selflessness (Charity) in The Four Loves - it's actually rather applicable here. A particular paraphasing comes to mind here:

"[Love] begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god."

Once a love starts to take over, it destroys.

How? Here is as follows.

Captain Hook a.k.a Killian Jones
I'd say one of the least sympathetic, Killian was a philandering, murdering pirate. His True Love, Milah, was killed by Rumpelstiltskin, and so he swore vengeance - taking a portal to Neverland to preserve his life while he figured out how.
In the current story line, he switches sides like a revolving door and has displayed absolutely no mercy - especially towards Belle, the woman who Rumpelstiltskin loves. As far as motivations go he kinda has the weakest.
His love is Eros (Romantic Love), and when it goes out of control he only wants to ruin Rumpelstiltskin's love because he was denied his.

Regina Mills a.k.a. The Evil Queen
Regina Mills is the woman who cast the curse - she was known as the Evil Queen. When we meet her we know that she's been trying to kill Snow White, her step daughter, for some reason and that she cast the curse so that she would be miserable. No more happy endings.
It's revealed that the reason she wants Snow dead is that when Snow was 8 years old she told Regina's mother, Cora, that Regina was in love with a stable boy named Daniel. Cora, a powerful witch, didn't want Regina running off with a stable boy when she could marry the King - so she killed him.
(Cora also arranged the meeting between Regina and the King - by having Snow's horse go wild and Regina riding to rescue her)
However, this wasn't the start of Regina's fall from grace. She tried to escape her marriage but mother dearest would always stop her. Until one day she called up a powerful being - Rumplestiltskin - to help her. He helped Regina trap her mother in a mirror (in Wonderland incidentally where she became the Queen of Hearts).
Rumples took her on as his apprentice and by pretending to try and help her bring back Daniel (it was an elaborate plan to destroy her last bit of goodness by pretending the procedure failed so she had nothing left) he finished the foundation for the woman who would become the Evil Queen. This woman would proceed to try to kill Snow White for frakking with her chances of love, and then go on to cast the curse that would deny everyone their "happy endings".

In Storybrook (the town they live in our world) she is the mayor and she has adopted a boy, Henry - who happens to be the son of Emma, the aforementioned savior. Henry suspects the curse and thus doesn't like his mother.
(I think he's a bit of an asshole - I mean, the woman has raised him for 10 years and with the exception of trying to have his psychiatrist convince him that his theory is madness hasn't been a bad mother)
Her actions in the series are primarily aimed at trying to keep Henry - however, she doesn't do it the right ways since while it's clear she loves him, her only real examples of parental love are her passive father and her b*tch of a mother. At the beginning of season two she was working to redeem herself in Henry's eyes, but thanks to Cora's intervention she's now back to the "dark side".

Regina started out on Eros with regards to her desire to destroy Snow White but has since moved onto Affection (family love). She loves Henry - so he must love her back. She exhibits the "need-love" aspect of Affection - it wants to be returned, it wants to be loved.

Cora a.k.a The Miller's Daughter (from Rumpelstiltskin)
Honestly the biggest b*itch in the series. While she only wants the "best" for Regina, she doesn't allow Regina any choice in the matter and has even used magic to restrain her. Basically, rather than true concern for her daughter, she would rather live out her failed ambitions through her. In the most recent episodes, she framed Regina for murder to turn Henry against her and then used this new divide to convince her daughter that she could only get Henry back through use of magic.
She helped Killian to get his revenge on Rumplestiltskin in order to chase her daughter into a new world and "assist her in her greatest time of need".
In C.S. Lewis's the Four Loves, we can see that Cora's "love" is when Affection goes wrong. Affection needs to be needed, such that it will manufacture reasons why it must still be needed. Cora does this throughout the series and thus exhibits the "give-love" aspect of Affection - the need to be needed.

Rumpelstiltskin a.k.a. Mr Gold, a.k.a. The Dark One
If we want to trace back everything that went wrong in this world, it comes back to Rumpelstiltskin. He taught Cora magic, he gave Regina the curse, he killed Killian's True Love. But why?
Well, Rumpelstiltskin was once a poor man with a son, Baelfire. His wife had left him long ago and the town hated him because of his cowardice in running away from a battle. And now his son (not yet fourteen) was being recruited into the same long running war.
He had heard that he could control a great entity called the Dark One if he had it's dagger - a dagger currently kept by the man sending the children to war. So, with Baelfire's help he stole the dagger and summoned the Dark One. After an argument Rumpelstiltskin accidentally killed the Dark One - and became him.
After this Rumples defeated the ogres in the war and brought the children back... but the power went to his head. Nothing was to hurt his son. They would never be looked down on again. However, Baelfire grew afraid of his father and wished for him to return to normal so he consulted the Blue Fairy. The Blue Fairy gave him a magic bean, the "last in the land" (revealed to be a big fat lie) that would take them to a world without magic. However when Baelfire went into the portal, the coward in Rumples resurfaced such that while he was freaking out the portal closed. Since the Blue Fairy said there was no other way, Rumples started to try and find the Curse so that he could return to his son.
It was this event that lead to his teaching Cora magic, his corrupting of Regina, all to get to this "world without Magic".

Again we see Affection, but I think Rumples is more motivated by guilt. It was his cowardice that caused his wife to leave him and that caused him to lose his son. But it was the total disregard for anything but his son that did the most damage. He lost his True Love Belle twice to this - as a kiss from her would break the curse of the Dark One and he would lose the power to find his son. In Storybrook he and Belle struggle with his dark side.

Rumpelstiltskin works a bit differently to the other characters since he is sharing his body with an evil entity that sort of boosts his dark side. However, the biggest fan backlash was about his actions towards Killian. I mean, it didn't serve his purposes of finding Baelfire so it can't be justified by that. And, honestly, of all his crimes I'd say that this was the most... well... human.

I mentioned that Rumpelstiltskin's wife had left him, yes? She did - for Killian. But she didn't outright walk out on him. She pretended that she had been kidnapped and then Killian challenged Rumples to fight for her. Rumples who had a limp. And a very young son who would be an orphan if Rumples died. And thus Rumples couldn't fight - he was afraid. Rumples carried that guilt with him for at least 10 years - that it was due to his cowardice that Baelfire didn't have a mother.
Once he became the Dark One he tracked down Killian to avenger Milah - only to find she was happy with him. In exchange for their lives she offered a magic bean (told you the Blue Fairy was a liar). When Rumples asked her why she left Baelfire she said it was difficult but she had to be free "never loved [Rumpelstiltskin]".
Now... the woman who he married and had kids with, the woman whose "kidnapping" he felt guilty for for several years, the woman who he obviously loved just told him she never loved him and hated him so much that not only did she wished he died in the Ogre wars but chose to leave her son just so she wouldn't be with him. In a rage her killed her and left - and so Killian stole the bean and used it to get to Neverland.

A lot of people hate him for that... but I really view it as his most "human" action - I mean, all this information was just dumped on him. What else would he feel besides rage?

Anyway... I guess I made this post because I don't see that many really good villains - these guys may not believe that they are doing the "right" thing, but they are working towards real goals. And it's nice to see a villain where the "love" that motivates them isn't about power or lust.

Chemical: the way we love, the way we love;

It's quite inhuman...

Personal: God Laughs

Have you ever had your life sort of turned topsy-turvy, where things that you didn't think were going to happen for a while suddenly happen and things that you thought would happen sooner get delayed and the like?

Well, as they say, "Man plans; God laughs" and the Lord has been having a good chuckle over here.

I don't think I talk a lot about myself on this blog but the things that are relevant to this post are that I'm a perfectionist, don't like change, have a preoccupation with the future, and am terrible at adhering to my limits (not "realizing my limits", mind you; I know what they are, I just don't respect them... which is stupid)

For the last five or so years, I've been in something of a self-imposed rut. A seemingly endless sea of monotony, that was, quite frankly, taking it's toll on me. Not the "monotony" itself, I guess, but the nature of it  - always pushing myself, always trying to live up to people's expectations of me regardless of whether they were realistic or not.

I guess, the defining incident that stands out was the first semester I took on four units and had been advised by one of the higher ups to take on a calculus unit that I didn't really have the prerequisites for. Furthermore, the unit was aimed at engineering students while I was a mere commerce student, a young one at that. But I wanted to pursue statistics so it was what I needed. It was a tough semester, but I made it through that unit and achieved a Distinction (at my uni, it's the second best grade type) and was initially quite proud. Until everyone else started weighing in. Mum was calculating whether I could maintain my average with this mere Distinction, the lecturer who had recommended the unit to me said he was expecting a High Distinction. The only person who actually gave me positive feedback was the lecturer who taught the unit.

In hindsight, I should have seen that they weren't being realistic expecting that high a grade of me. I mean, I liked maths and was good at it but was no mathematical genius - better than commerce but not a mathematician or engineer. However, it unfortunately set a standard in my mind that I really couldn't keep up on a long term basis.

(I am not blaming others for my... stupidity, since this attitude did die down in later semesters. But they did plant the idea which grew to define part of me... that unless my grades were perfect they, and by extension I, were worthless. It was an exaggerated view but it was still my view.)

I managed to keep being a high achiever for four years, at the expense of everything else. Including my health. I won't go into details but, I was definitely worse for wear. Being a high achiever wasn't really the problem... it was the fact that that was all I was. Any hobbies I had in high school had either been abandoned or left to the side to be resumed at some undefined point in time (with very few exceptions). When I talked about my hobbies, I was often working off very old information. Even my holidays were spent in preparation for the next semester. (I can think of only one exception, and it was in the recent two years - even then, it was a hobby binge)

(Honestly, I really should have picked up on the decline earlier - just looking at some of my unpublished posts has me facepalming at how obviously... "not right" things were)

Anyway, the toll that the my stupidity has resulted in a drastically decreased load and thus adding a bit more time to my degree - but, after much deliberation, that's a good thing. I mean, I'm not just a student, I'm a person. I have a personality, and I have things that I've liked to do. I am an amateur writer and that's been neglected for a long while. I'm not saying that I'm giving up on my grades or something like that - I still want my degree and I want it to be worth something. It's just not going to be the only thing that defines me, not anymore.

Going back to that expression at the beginning... the one on God laughing. Well, we don't laugh at something unless it's either very silly or very funny, so wouldn't it stand to reason that God laughs at those sorts of things too? And let's face it, my "plan" wasn't exactly intelligent... but I would have continued it if it hadn't negatively impacted my well-being.

So the whole "God laughs" bit isn't really about messing up Man's plans, but more about going "Hey, you're doing it wrong - let's give you a chance to think about that for a second, silly child". Of course it really does say something that it takes a metaphorical arrow to the knee to get me to sit and actually think about what I'm doing but hey, I should work on that.

If you're not particularly religious, the moral still applies I think, in that really more thought should be given to a person's priorities when things are going well rather than having these overly long contemplative moments when things don't turn out as planned. But in my case, I'm going to pay a little less attention to me-as-a-student and more attention to me-as-a-person.

Which, incidentally, actually includes getting back to this blog. :)

Music: I Want My Tears Back

A song for the inner child... though the longing for "sleepless nights" is also something someone suffering from writer's block can probably sympathize with as well...
But posting because wonderful song is wonderful.


 Nightwish - I Want My Tears Back



I want my tears back

The treetops, the chimneys, the snowbed stories, winter grey
Wildflowers, those meadows of heaven, wind in the wheat

A railroad across water, the scent of grandfatherly love
Blue bayous, Decembers, moon through a dragonfly's wings

Where is the wonder, where's the awe?
Where's dear Alice knocking on the door?
Where's the trapdoor that takes me there?
Where the real is shattered by a Mad March Hare?

Where is the wonder, where's the awe?
Where are the sleepless nights I used to live for?
Before the years take me
I wish to see
The lost in me

I want my tears back
I want my tears back now

A ballet on a grove, still growing young all alone
A rag doll, a best friend, the voice of Mary Costa

Where is the wonder, where's the awe?
Where's dear Alice knocking on the door?
Where's the trapdoor that takes me there?
Where the real is shattered by a Mad March Hare?

Where is the wonder, where's the awe?
Where are the sleepless nights I used to live for?
Before the years take me
I wish to see
The lost in me

I want my tears back
I want my tears back now

Music: Who Am I Living For?

Oh hush - I know it's Katy Perry but I happen to like this song. >_>

 Katy Perry - Who Am I Living For?



I can feel a phoenix inside of me
As I march alone to a different beat,
Slowly swallowing down my fear, yeah yeah...

I am ready for the road less traveled;
Suiting up for my crowning battle.
This test is my own cross to bear
But I will get there.

It's never easy to be chosen, never easy to be called;
Standing on the frontline when the bomb starts to fall.
I can see the heavens but I still hear the flames
Calling out my name...

I can see the writing on the wall:
I can't ignore this war.
At the end of it all
Who am I living for?

I can feel this light that's inside of me.
Growing fast into a bolt of lightning:
I know one spark will shock the world, yeah yeah...

So I pray for a favour like Esther:
I need your strength to handle the pressure.
I know there will be sacrifice,
But that's the price.

It's never easy to be chosen, never easy to be called;
Standing on the frontline when the bomb starts to fall.
I can see the heavens but I still hear the flames
Calling out my name...

I can see the writing on the wall:
I can't ignore this war.
At the end of it all
Who am I living for?

I can see the writing on the wall:
I can't ignore this war.
At the end of it all
Who am I living for?

At the end, at the end
Who am I living for?
At the end, at the end
Who am I living for?

Heavy is the head that wears the crown;
Don't let the greatness get you down.
Heavy is the head that wears the crown;
Don't let the greatness get you down.

I can see the writing on the wall:
I can't ignore this war.
At the end of it all
Who am I living for?

I can see the writing on the wall:
I can't ignore this war.
At the end of it all
Who am I living for?

At the end, at the end
Who am I living for?
At the end, at the end
Who am I living for?