Speaking of restating “all men are potential rapists” as “to a woman, any man can be a potential rapist,” I’d like to talk for just a second about what I think is an overlooked problem with the traditional phrase.

If I can just try it out for a second it goes something like this:

1) The overt obstacle for men… even more so for progressive ones… is that to acknowledge being seen as a potential rapist goes against everything we’re taught to believe as Americans, as progressives, etc., about the evils of stereotyping and blanket oppression of members of a class.

2) The covert obstacle for men is that the accusation blends seamlessly with the way we perceive ourselves anyway — it’s just one more obstacle we believe we have to “seduce” our way through anyway if we want to be in any sort of relationship with women at all (not just sexual ones!)

3) Consequently the grammar of all “but I’m an exception, I’m not a rapist” is identical to every other attempt to form a heterosexual relationship, with the additional and particularly nettlesome layer for men of “well great, not only do I now have to demonstrate first that I’m not a loser and second that I’m not a cad but also third that I’m also not a class-one felon.”

4) In other words minus the perceived criminal allegations the entire relational interactions take place on ground heterosexuals… at least heterosexual men… have already worn into deep, familiar ruts.

5) The problem with all “but I’m not a rapist” arguments is there’s a tacit “unlike all the others who probably are.”

6) With the really problematic… well… problem with number five being yet another tacit clause: “... but I nevertheless feel no obligation to do anything about.”

That last one’s a doozy and, I think, cracking it is one big key to solving the problem with, on the one hand male defensiveness and on the other male indifference. I think rhetorically restating the problem as “to a woman, any man is a potential rapist” makes shirking that obligation a lot more difficult. Not impossible, no*, but definitely more difficult

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I ought to mention that the lightbulb for this went off for me after reading Britni Daniell’s post of A Different Defense of Schrodinger’s Rapist. In which she responds to previous objections by Champagne and Benzedrine and extensively quotes Hugo Schwyzer (from here and here.)

* Because another thing that shakes out of the construction, above, is you know how men appear to value a relationship in proportion to how hard he thinks he has to work for it? Well, to the extent that’s true he’s going to be personally frustrated by the additional layer of mistrust but… I wonder if he’s going to feel more “worthy” if he can “win” a woman over in spite of that? If so then it’s definitely not a good dynamic.