Sexual Immaturity, Lack of Education in Interpersonal Communication and Patriarchy as Causal Factors of Rape and Sexual Assault
Earlier today, I read an article that was published in the Ohio State Journal of criminal law written in 1997. From time to time, I like to review how far we’ve come in the understanding of causal links to rape/sexual assault. I cannot tell you how grateful I am as a survivor and therapist, supervisor and teacher, for the gains in public accountability to safely speak about experiences of rape, incest and sexual assault. We still have a long ways to go, and what I would like to argue to you today, are the endemic factors contributing to rape and sexual abuse stated in the title of this article.
Back in 1997, Dryden, an academic lawyer and his peers, tried to catalogue the differences between the feminist perspective as rape being a tool of control and oppression against people, as a symptom of a patriarchal toxic masculine dominant narratives, and the perspective of evolutionary psychologist theories, which still clung to the old song of rape and sexual assault being connected in some way to legitimate sexual desire.
As a counsellor and soon-to-be psychologist, I have to tell you that I can see both perspectives, and each one, respectively, lends itself to their pathways to “resolution.” Endings to the survivor’s mixture of fear, rage, distrust and societal double-binds, and endings to resolve the sexual and emotional immaturity, deficits in interpersonal communication and male supremacy that exist within the offender.
When working with a rapist/sexual assault offender, I assist them in decoupling their ideas of successful relationship through rape, and separating their neural pathways of pleasure response chemicals through the act of rape or having been raised watching rape simulations. Furthermore, I help them break free of the crippling ignorance in defending and even pride-taking in rape culture. To this work, it requires me to recognize there is some kind of sexual thrill and gratification associated with the act of rape in this person’s neural links of association. However, I do not believe this is legitimate sexual desire, but a dysfunctional result of toxic and abusive early life experiences. Toxic masculinity has officially been linked to poor mental health outcomes by the American Psychological Association in 2019, negatively impacting boys, girls, non-binary people, and the families they later form. Toxic masculinity relies upon rape culture to excuse inexcusable violations of people’s rights to be left alone when they want to be, no matter how disappointing this is to their pursuers.
I have treated people who have been conditioned to find the act of dominance, bullying and exploitation acceptable ways to connect with others to get them to do what they want, by providing psychosocial training to instead connect them with authentic forms of communication via intimacy-building skills. The basic communication skills they lack can be generated through teaching, practicing and evaluating nonviolent question asking, active listening techniques, mentalization exercises (the precursor to empathy), and of course, the tracing back of how their neural pathways first fired and wired violence and sexual fulfillment together.
I’ll get back to how I use the feminist model to help rehabilitate survivors of sexual assault in a moment.
In my early 20’s, I was in relationship with a man who confessed to me that he found watching car accidents — often with graphic injuries to the survivors — sexually arousing. I thought this was odd and asked him what he found so appealing about watching people almost or actually die; he described the intensity of the situation mirrored his own internal feelings, or gave him something more anxiety-inducing outside of his own issues, to focus on. And this excited him. This man also attempted to suffocate me during sex, and physically restrained me so that I could not move on a bed after I woke him up in the middle of the night.
I remember being in absolute shock after the restraining incident (my first experience of physical abuse by a man I thought I loved), and slowly slipping out of bed, careful and quiet so as to not wake him a second time. I was 23. I remember that morning so vividly because it was the day Prince William and Kate Middleton got married, and in Canada it was being televised at 4:30am due to the time difference.
To return to the previous example, I had elbowed him hard in the gut when he attempted to suffocate me during sex and he immediately released and berated himself for finding the act erotic.
Here is what I want to emphasize for the heterosexual cis men reading this article: consent means talking about things you want to do before actually doing them. If you don’t ask, or you don’t stop when someone says no, then it’s assault.
So, here’s the test: can you tell which example I described was assault based on how I described the function of consent? The restraint was assault, it was designed to control and subdue my movements. The suffocation was not discussed or agreed upon before intercourse. He stopped after I elbowed him, and then felt guilty about his actions after it was clear I did not sign up for it. So, both were instances of technical assault.
It was when my boyfriend restrained me that really scared me because it was done to ambush and punish me with blunt force out of his anger at my not doing what he wanted me to do.
The worst thing a man worries about is a woman laughing at him; the worse thing a woman worries about is a man killing her.
People who do not have access to quality educational or diverse cultural influences are often limited in their understanding of healthy sexual dynamics. They remain sexually immature, lazy and entitled to sexual intercourse, as though it is owed to them.
In this way, the lack of education can foster many maladaptive perspectives towards animals and human sexuality but, the subtle degradation involved in it never ceased to amaze me. Often, animals are used as surrogate vaginas and orifices for abusive people to lash out with their genitalia because human vaginas and orifices are too good at avoiding them. These passive animals are often far more containable and controllable for the nonconsensual penetration some people find so thrilling, funny, or (gag) “harmless.” I dated a man who was conditioned to find the subject of raping sheep to be hilarious.
This bothered me greatly from the beginning of our relationship and I told him exactly why. As a sexual assault survivor and survivor of incest, I found this response to be greatly worrying. I told him that there was a known connection between people who would sexually abuse animals and people who would sexually abuse human beings. You would think that would have wiped the smile off of his face, but it didn’t. He clung to his right to find sexually assaulting animals funny, and refused to observe the connection between hurting animals and hurting human beings. He preferred to think of it as an absurd joke and live in fatuity because it was easier than choosing to learn empathy. Because patriarchy loves rape culture and he and his besties needed these two things in order to feel connected to one another. How utterly lonely.
I found an article written last year reporting on three men who raped their farm animals, which included 9 horses, many dogs, a cow and a goat, and then videotaped these crimes.
These men manipulated a teenager to help them abuse the animals, covertly sexually abusing him also, and later, this boy had the courage to report them. They were charged with Animal Sexual Assault and sent to jail. The societal costs of this kind of microaggression (laughing at sexual assault) against survivors of sexual assault (be they animal or human), are many.
There is a scene in “A Promising Young Woman” when Madison (Alison Brie) reluctantly comes forward with a video recording of Cassie’s (Carey Milligan) best friend’s rape at a university party. The transcript goes like this:
“Madison: There was a tape.
Cassie: What?
Madison: A stupid video… it got sent around, I got sent it — everyone did, at that time it was — just gossip — you know.
Cassie: Gossip?
Madison: So much… stuff happened back then. Like, all the time. You know what it was like, it was just one blackout after the next, I, I… hoped I’d imagined it, but um… I saved on my phones for photos or whatever so… Here. I don’t know how I could ever have watched it and…
Cassie: What?
Madison: Thought it was funny. You can have the phone, OK? You don’t have to watch it… I really wouldn’t watch it but… I don’t know, do whatever you want with it just… leave me out of it. And please will you do me a favor?
Madison: Yeah.
Cassie: Never f*cking contact me again.”
So here’s how I help the survivors: I validate that the above experience of living in a culture where sexual assault is funny to a large segment of the population, is traumatizing. I acknowledge that rape and sexual assault is motivated to control another person because in order for somebody that sexually abuses another person to continue doing what they’re doing, they have to care more about their own feelings, thoughts, experiences, sensations, etc. than the other person, and without the basic communication skills to ask repeatedly if somebody is interested in sex, nor the ability to read and understand nonverbal cues let alone accept a changed mind, rape is a tool of control, and it is never the survivor’s fault.
Expecting the survivor to take responsibility for the offender’s sexual and emotional immaturity, lack of interpersonal communication skills, and belief in a patriarchally organized and enforced system of sexual relations, is unreasonable and fundamentally ludicrous.
Would you trust the most sacred part of your human vessel, designed for astronomical pleasure, to a baby? No, of course you wouldn’t. But some emotional and psychological babies who have adult sized bodies throw tantrums and take the sacred anyway, against that sacred-holder’s basic human rights, out of spite… because you know, they feel entitled to it.
I urge anyone who is incapable of understanding the subtle nuances of non-verbal communication and consent in all of its forms, to just not have sex. Several options for sexual education await you: research ethical sexual practices, learn from a compassionate sex worker how to have consensual sex, listen to what women have to say about what they like and don’t like in a nonjudgemental way before you engage in sexual intercourse. Take a growth mindset to sex, be humble, and know that no one knows everything. Not even men who believe themselves to be virile sex-machines. It’s a myth, and it’s been busted time and time again.
And the biggest thing I should encourage? The race to orgasm is a perfect way to kill the joy of sex. If orgasm is the only reason you have sex with another human, you’re doing it wrong.
The problem that patriarchy and its little brother with a big chip on his shoulder, toxic masculinity, poses to authentic human connection, has been discussed extensively in other publications.
What is perhaps the most heartbreaking complication of patriarchy, lack of education and sexual immaturity of my male partners has had in my life, is the loss of friendship and respect for them once I learn they too have fallen for the hype perpetuated to them by other men, that women find this obliviousness “hot.” To believe that a woman enjoys being ignored, dismissed, diminished, judged in shallow and moronically over-simplified ways, is psychological poison and a form of abuse. The man is left an emotional skeleton of what he could have been, had he been supported and mentored by caring, nurturing men and boy peers who understood that girls aren’t that different from them. Oh yeah, and they as boys and men, aren’t pieces of shit, so they shouldn’t treat other boys and men in such a fashion.
I have known 3 rapists personally in my life — not as a clinician, and not as a subject to study. It is a very horrible thing to live with the reality that our families and institutions are prepared to protect his reputation at the survivor’s expense. All three rapists chose to rape an unconscious person on the grounds that they hung out with them during the night, and this unconscious person was by all intents and purposes, wanting to connect with the rapists in some way, but not wanting to have sex with them while they were still conscious.
The man who has sex with an unconscious person is incredibly weak-minded and the necessary backlash he rightly faces when that person wakes up, should not be met yet again with a baby-tantrum of not having been allowed to take what he thought was his right.
This sequence of events, so common and disturbingly defended, is not strong, it is not “accidental,” hot or studly. It is cowardly, weak and incredibly feeble-minded.
I can tell you how deeply these patterns extend as well. Mothers are raped by their fathers, who go on to distrust men, who choose dismissive and emotionally abusive partners, or become abusive themselves, who have daughters and sons who are abused and then go on to abuse and rape others.
This is why I have created a new list of resources, which I will be posting in the coming weeks, in both video and text, to serve as archives chronicling my knowledge in how to recover as a thriver, to how to support change as a clinician. Not only the survivors, but the offenders. Because for someone to harm someone’s most sacred vessel, something has wounded them deeply that requires corrective psychic surgery. And restorative justice is the way to do that, not by passing the buck and letting them off with no accountability, and not throwing them behind the bars of a jail cell with few resources to learn from their inflicting harm.
I plan to write more on the stages, perspectives and nuances of restorative justice in a variety of contexts and communities in the coming weeks.
Stay tuned and don’t forget to check out my youtube channel filled with great resources for healing and treating complex PTSD, sexual assault, incest and complications of sexual harassment: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYz_7ZfugYD75LpVoF49RVg
Wishing you good mental health,
Jessica
