Blaming the Victim
I’m sorry but, in my opinion, sometimes the victim is a little bit at fault. Rape is never right. Rape is never justified. However, when people put themselves into really stupid situations and don’t get up and leave the first three times the person they’re with fails to listen to a “no,” it’s hard to not think that the actual assault could have been avoided. Not that she’s calling it assault.
Sorry. Let me back up a little bit…
Once, not so long ago, on a kink advice board that is on the outskirts of a large social networking community in the center of the electronic city we know as the Internet, there lived a young person of indeterminate gender. This young person, who will henceforth be known as The Idiot, posted a situation so infuriating that it was difficult not to reach through the computer and shake her (I’m sorry. I’m assuming it’s a her since she seemed un-empowered in a typically very female way) for being an idiot and then hunt down the asshole who effectively assaulted her, punch his lights out, and then tattoo on his forehead “Avoid me. I am an asshole who does not know the meaning of the word ‘no.’”
Anyway, the story goes something like this:
The Idiot goes to meet “her Master*” in person for the first time. He gets stuck in traffic and is coming into town late so he asks her to meet him and his (male) friend at a hotel** that is sufficiently distant from her house that she is going to have difficulty getting back home safely given the inclement weather. They talk for a little while, they snuggle, and he says she should stay overnight because the weather is awful. She agrees, and then he says he wants to watch a pornographic film with her and the friend. She doesn’t particularly want to, but doesn’t say anything because “her Master” knows that she doesn’t want to do anything sexual***.
At this point, “her Master” starts jerking off and asks her to take off her top. She refuses. He asks her to get naked for him and his friend. She refuses. Each time she refuses, “her Master” cajoles her with statements like “don’t you want to be a good little girl for me.”**** Eventually, he and his friend strip and start jerking off, and then he asks her to give him a hand job. She keeps saying no, but gives in and does it after he forces her hand down onto his penis*****. After his orgasm, he asks her to give his friend a blowjob. She says no repeatedly and, after a period of cajoling that includes actual threats like “you wouldn’t like it if my friend had to punish you,” he stops trying to force the issue and gives up. The Idiot falls asleep on the floor and waits until morning to go home.
This ENTIRE time, the Idiot is worried that she is “being disrespectful” to “her Master” by saying no to him, despite having told him in advance that she wanted no sexual contact with him. She continues to call the asshole “her Master” throughout the situation and stays after the incident because she wants to spend more time with “her Master.” The next day she tries to talk it over with “her Master” and he doesn’t see that anything he did was wrong. Which brings us to the post. She has written to ask our advice because she wants to know if she is over reacting and should have just done anything “her Master” asked her to do. And then she asks the question that made me want to shake her the most…
“Isn’t it my Master’s job to make a safe word or even discuss having one? Especially if he wants something sexual?”
No.
Idiot, and all you other naive, young things out there, it is not your “Master’s” job to give you a safeword. It is not your “Master’s” job to know that sex is a big deal for you. It is YOUR job to say “I don’t want to do anything sexual” and “I would feel safer playing with a safeword” and to spell out what you will and won’t do with someone - particularly if you’re incapable of saying “no” when a scene is in progress. More importantly, it’s your responsibility TO YOURSELF to not allow someone to have power over you who doesn’t respect you and your limits. Your submission is a valuable gift. If some asshole doesn’t appreciate it and tries to take advantage of you then he’s not worthy of your time and you should walk, or run, away. If you’re not capable of walking away? Don’t put yourself in the situation in the first place.
A lot of people refer to BDSM as “graduate level” sex, because there are some basic skills it requires to practice it safely. One of those skills, for a submissive, is the ability to say what you are and aren’t willing to do and not let someone take advantage of you. Another one of those skills is not putting yourself into dangerous situations unless you are both willing to accept the risks and know what those risks are. Oh look. I seem to be having a theme this week. It shouldn’t take that much experience to realize that there are a lot of idiots and assholes out there on the Internet. Still, given a modicum of common sense, it’s reasonably easy to stay safe if you’re on one side of a monitor and they’re on the other. If you can’t figure how to translate that reasonable level of safety into real life … well, then you might be better off avoiding real life like the plague.******
–
*Really? Just from conversations on the Internet? I’m fine with text based D/s, but calling someone “your Master” who you’ve never even met seems a little foolhardy. I don’t think you can really establish the requisite trust online. And, oh look!, her experience is backing up that belief!
**Stupid mistake number 1: the first time you meet someone from the Internet, you should always meet in a public location where other people are around to help you if something goes wrong. Meeting two strange men in a hotel room on the far side of nowhere? That’s just dumb.
***Stupid mistake number 2: if you’re with someone who wants to start watching porn with you and you don’t want to do anything sexual, it’s probably worth reminding them of that fact even if you don’t ask them not to watch the video. Hell, if you’re with someone who wants to do something that makes you uncomfortable, even if it’s just walking around without pants on, it might be at least worth mentioning it to them. Some people are uncomfortable around pantsless people of the opposite gender. Some people associate being pantsless with sex and question random casual pantslessness. It’s worth considering this fact before you go pantsless around random acquaintances. This actually came up over the weekend.
****Stupid mistake number 3 & 4: the first time someone tries to cajole you into doing something, particularly something sexual, that you do not want to do, you should walk away. Anyone who doesn’t respect a “no” isn’t someone you want to trust in a scene… or a cheap hotel room. And, if you think the first situation was a fluke, the second time the person tries to pull that crap should send you running for the door.
*****Bing! And we have sexual assault.
******Mind you, I think The Idiot probably would have gotten an F in High School Sex as well. “her Master” could just as easily have been replaced with “her Boyfriend who she had never met before but Really Wanted To Like Her after all their Amazing Talks on the Internet”
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 6:29 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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on May 15th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Say it, sister.
And then say it again, because you know some dumb young or inexperienced thing is going to want to try her hand at D/s and find one of those oh so masterful “Masters” who are also young, dumb and inexperienced or simply fuckwits with a sadistic streak and this scenario will repeat itself.
This particular idiot was lucky to get out in one piece. Meeting not only one but two strangers in a hotel room, jesus christ, what blazing stupidity.
You recently wrote about unsafe BDSM practices and again I echo your sentiments. I am scared witless of breathplay and would never under any circumstances agree to it. I know it’s a big turn on for a lot of people, you can see some of the dumber ones turning up in your local newspaper from time to time. Still I am not one to say it should never be done, but with strangers - no, that is just asking for trouble.
I never heard the term graduate level sex before, but you know what, I like it.
Thanks for a series of wise posts.
on May 15th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Thank _you_ for the kind words and the great comment. As for the “and then say it again,” I was so annoyed by all of this this morning that I actually started on a series of BDSM 101 articles for the soft-core porn site I write for. When they told me “write more about BDSM, it’s the ‘next big thing’” I don’t think this is what they were necessarily looking for, but it’s what they’re getting. I love getting paid to proselytize.
on May 16th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I was all ready to get angry when I started to read your first few lines about blaming the victim, but by the end I kinda agree. Kinda. I agree that she was incredibly stupid, but still don’t forget that it was the ‘master’ who should really be getting the hate. he’s the perpetrator after all.
on May 16th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Milly,
Absolutely. He gets the hate, but she gets the eye rolling and the desire to smack her upside the head with a rolled up piece of newspaper. Rape is never the victim’s fault, but I think it’s also detrimental to society to say that a person’s behavior doesn’t affect their risk. Asking a woman to take some responsibility for her actions does not make the assault any less of a crime. It just hopefully helps her avoid being attacked again in the future. Saying “This asshole assaulted you and there was nothing you could have done to avoid it” does her a disservice. Since, if the assault had nothing to do with her actions, why wouldn’t she do the same stupid thing in the future… with potentially much worse consequences. Which reminds me, I want to go suggest that she write him a letter explaining to him exactly how his actions were unethical, immoral, and possibly illegal, and informing him that he is extremely lucky that she is not pressing charges. Also, I want to suggest that she contact the administrator of whatever service they met on to ask for his profile to be flagged or banned so that he can’t accost other women in the same way. If he seriously has no idea that he did anything wrong he could just be some deluded idiot who thinks that what he did is how to be a “Good Master”. Which doesn’t make his actions any less criminal… it just gives me a tiny sliver of hope that he could be prevented from engaging in them again.
on May 16th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Would you link to those BDSM 101 articles when you write them? There really aren’t enough such things in this world.
on May 16th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
I’m a little uncomfortable linking from here, because I don’t really want the site traffic causing the site owner to end up on this blog, but I can figure out a way around that after I double check that the owner doesn’t mind my linking in externally. I can’t see why she would, but… I should check.
on May 17th, 2008 at 8:51 am
*cough*
Graduate level sex, eh?
Heheh.
on May 18th, 2008 at 7:57 am
Weeeelll . . . I agree too, but I don’t like the names that got thrown at the person involved. She does sound naive, mis/un/informed, and, at the moment, not in a position to assert and express herself in the way that BDSM requires.
But so are many women, especially the young and sheltered. Despite hours and hours of education and “consciousness-raising” in high school and college, my friends and I did incredibly foolhardy things even before the advent of the Internet. What we did didn’t make us “really stupid”, or “idiots”, or “dumb”, or “fuckwits” (the last one was Tess’s comment
). It did mean that we were as you said young, inexperienced, and (relatively) un-empowered. And confused. (By the way–the guys weren’t all assholes either–some were also confused, naive, and inexperienced. And some were criminals.)
I’m really glad you wrote this; glad you’re writing more on the topic. And maybe the harsh language will catch the attention of people who need to focus. I _know_ examples work, so that when the “Master” says “Hey, I could really go for some porn right now,” a bell goes off in the woman’s young, naive, inexperienced mind, maybe triggering the advice of people who’ve figured out how not to be fuckwits.
on May 18th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Oh PS–graduate level sex IS brilliant.
on May 18th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Sera,
You make a very fair point. When I get annoyed, I get a bit derisive, and I was VERY annoyed that day.