Ampersand, raising a giant whopping WTF, says that under Federal crime-reporting standards men legally can't be raped.  Turns out that in the 1920s, when the reporting standards were generated, weren't exactly a bastion of progressive, feminist-influenced gender neutrality.

For [Uniform Crime] reporting purposes, can a male be raped?

No. The UCR Program defines forcible rape as “The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will” (p. 19). In addition, “By definition, sexual attacks on males are excluded from the rape category and must be classified as assaults or other sex offenses depending on the nature of the crime and the extent of injury”

Source: Alas, a blog

Lest Men's Rights Activists cry conspiracy about how it's all a femininisister plot to exclude male victims entirely, under more recent guidelines from the 1980s rape of men by women is legally recognized but...

[I]n the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) ... at least one offender must be of a different sex than the victim for the event to be classified as a forcible rape. For example, a female can rape a male, or in the case of multiple offenders, a female and male can rape a male. However, a male cannot rape another male, or in the case of multiple offenders, two males cannot rape a male.

To complete the FBI's gender-bound definitions, men can rape women, women can rape men, but men can't rape other men and women can't rape women.

But let's stop for a moment and reflect on the pace of progress: in the 1920s the law in the U.S. was almost entirely based on already centuries-old English Common Law adopted wholesale during Colonial times.  That not only defined rape as something that could happen exclusively to women, it was also defined as a property crime.  Where the legal victim was considered to be the woman's father, husband, or other custodial male who's "property" was "damaged!"

Fast forward 50 years to the 1980s when the NIBRS was established.  Society vaguely recognized that in order "to be fair" language had to be less narrowly gender specific.  Thus the inclusion of the possibility that women can rape men.  But based on my own recollection of the culture of the day I'm pretty sure that was a mere formality.  In the early 1980s they were just getting around to registering gay people as statistically relevant.  They were just getting around to recognizing the idea that there was more kinds of rape than jumping out of the bushes.  They were just barely getting around to accepting the idea that husbands could rape their wives.  Heck, they'd only barely just stated noticing all the "drop the soap" jokes about prison rape!

Fast forward 30 more years and... well... there's still quite a way to go but at least...

Advocates question the rape statistics because, they note, the federal government is using a 1929 definition of the crime that excludes male victims, statutory rapes and those committed without force.

Using such an antiquated, narrow definition is a harmful disservice to countless victims, according to Carol Tracy, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Women’s Law Project. Specter agreed, saying the definition is not “inclusive like it should be.”

Men account for roughly 10 percent of victims in the United States, said Scott Berkowitz, head of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

The adoption of broader rape statistics is critical to the recovery process for male victims, added Dr. Richard Gartner, a spokesman for the group Male Survivor.

Interestingly, the FBI’s man in charge of the UCR is quoted saying he’s open to changing the definitions.

Compared to the 1189 A.D. English Common Law, or the 1920s UCR, or the 1980s NIBRS, and you can actually detect some progress.

And, at least compared to 1189 A.D. it seems to be accelerating!

If they're not able to acknowledge that anybody can be raped, just as much as anybody can be a rapist, though, they're still stuck in the middle ages.

Something else to agitate for (and be agitated about.)

Photo by Flickr user adamhenning. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Razib Khan of Discover Blogs has a nice piece that suggests to my social-sciences eye that the “evolutionary” notion of paternity obsession in human men isn’t as much about… well… property.

Evolutionary history of partible paternity in lowland South America. Basically these are cultures where there’s a high degree of expected paternity uncertainty and you simply distribute appropriate the probability of fatherhood explicitly. I found this section of interest: “Most importantly, why is partible paternity rare in the rest of the world and yet, so common in lowland South America? We suspect that the general lack of important heritable resources combined with a strong reliance on kinship and broad networks of social capital in the lowlands have prompted the bargaining and exchange of shared parentage.” From a male perspective then basically someone who is not your own biological child isn’t going to inherit much from you anyway, while in the short-term you might be able to gain social capital through the ties your wife forms with other men. This isn’t that shocking, Winston Churchill’s mother’s affairs supposedly aided in her husband’s and son’s political careers because of the contacts generated. Sex is social.

Source: Discover Blogs.

It’s difficult to call this a minor or isolated phenomenon. The population in question is not small: 128 cultures. Neither is the area small: it includes the entire Amazon basin plus (if I’m getting my geography right) the Orinoco and Lianos river basins as well. So call it no less than tens of millions of people in scores of cultures across a large fraction of an entire continent over a period of on the order of thousands of years. Furthermore while after more than 500 years of European influence is beginning to take it’s toll, the system arose and spread successfully amid more traditionally gendered (pre- and post-Columbian) cultures. So it was not only minor or isolated, it was also robust.

One element of social organization that might facilitate the less patriarchal parental relationship is the tendency (hard to talk about anything more than tendencies among a group of 128 linked but separate cultures) for women to stay home with their families and for their (primary) partners to come live with them for the duration of their relationships. It’s not “matriarchal” or even necessarily matrilineal but it doesn’t put title-holding men the center of the picture.

The overall cultures aren’t any more beds of roses, for women or men, than any other human cultures. They’re still gendered out the wazoo, they’re just prioritized differently. And while the cultures tend to be patriarchal in the sense that the interests of family and social groups tend to trump the interests of individual men and women in them they’re not the kind of patriarchal with the capital-P systems common among those biologists, social scientists, and MRAs most likely to produce models of biological reproduction based on their own culture’s legal, economic, and religious traditions of inheritance.

Laura Warrell of Tart and Soul says good men actually finish first.

Monica was this hot mama sex goddess I used to work with serving cocktails in college.  Slinky as a feline, she was nearly six feet tall with curves galore.  She had flawless skin, a magnificent, traffic-stopping face and a personality as colorful as the Bobbi Brown eye shadow she used to drop the cherry on the sundae of her magnetic appeal.  Monica was ravishing enough to date famous athletes, businessmen pulling down six figures and local actors on their way to becoming Hollywood B-listers.  If anyone would’ve ended up sipping daiquiris by the pool of some handsome millionaire’s mansion, it was Monica.

Recently, Monica popped up as a friend of a friend on Facebook, so I clicked on her page.  She was gorgeous as ever and though I wasn’t shocked to discover she hadn’t become some Tinseltown trophy wife, I was surprised to see photos of the man she married.  The guy was goofy looking, a squat little pudgeball.  And no Mr. Moneybags was he, as Monica’s other half apparently lived a quiet though comfortable life as the owner of a small electronics company.  But there was one huge difference about the look in her husband’s eye as he cast his gaze upon my old friend, as opposed to the more extraordinary men I’d once seen her with – this guy completely worshipped her.

Monica is one of a slew of foxy female friends who used to date bad boys, sexy studs and all around pricks until they finally settled down with a man who actually liked them.  Maybe these guys don’t look like movie stars or take their women on masochistic joy rides filled with broken promises and non-commitment.  But they do treat their gals with some semblance of respect.  Seems some good guys get the girl in the end.

Source: Laura Warrell of Tart and Soul.

I don’t have to be crazy about some of the cultural assumptions in the post to appreciate the main point. For instance it’s an assumption that a woman who’s beautiful enough could have defaulted to marrying her choice of rich assholes. And it’s another assumption that it’s ideal if a (pudgy?) husband worships his (beautiful?) wife.

But the example would have held for far more ordinarily-matched pairs because, well, it holds for most ordinary patched pairs who choose each other.

I emphasized choosing each other because one of the commenters mentions that she’s very happy with the partner she chose rather than the more handsome, wealthier, smarter and more stylish man her family would have preferred she’d picked.

My mother (ack! the mother) likes, prefers and would rather me pair up with Bachelor number one. She thinks we look good together. Our kids would be breathtaking. She can see him as her son-in-law. I would rather take a bath in acid. I adore Bachelor number two. He’s the one that raises eyebrows. I am already tired of the commentary…but I like him. A lot. I choo-choo-choose him… Much to everyone’s chagrin.

And I mention that because it raises a really, really important point about where cultural pressure makes a mystery out of what’s often otherwise perfectly rational personal behavior. It takes the general form “I wish I could have X so I think you should do Y to get it.” For instance the commenter’s mom wants an attractive son-in-law and resulting grandchildren. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but she wouldn’t be the one making the necessary sacrifices to get those things for her. It might be incomprehensible to the mom but it seems to be a very obvious choice to the daughter. Somewhat similarly a lot of people (mostly men?) think it would be really nice to partner (at least briefly) a fabulously beautiful women. And so they imagine that ought to be the most important criteria for someone else — enough so that if the someone else manages to connect with a beautiful woman he ought to continuously count his lucky stars, and show worshipful gratitude to boot.

What’s really tough, by the way, is when you absorb that message to the point you use them as your own selection criteria. “Well, he would worship the ground we walk on.” “Well all the other guys would be dying of envy.” “Well, we would have more attractive children.” “Well, it would make mom happy and dad proud.”

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek or accept input from those around us. “Her previous partner filed a restraining order” and “You’re a recovering alcoholic and he’s a bartender” being only the most obvious examples.

But there’s a difference between the two kinds of input. One is sort of about universal scarcity or luck (“he/she can get backstage passes to all the shows!) and the other’s about personal assessment (“you seem unselfconsciously happy when you’re around each other.”)

Via AlwaysArousedGirl Greta Christna, writing at Blowfish Blog has a lovely post titled “Sex and the Off-Label Use of Our Bodies.”

Human beings took our animal need for palatable food . . . and turned it into chocolate souffles with salted caramel cream. We took our ability to co-operate as a social species . . . and turned it into craft circles and bowling leagues and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We took our capacity to make and use tools . . . and turned it into the Apollo moon landing. We took our uniquely precise ability to communicate through language . . . and turned it into King Lear.

None of these things are necessary for survival and reproduction. That is exactly what makes them so splendid. When we take our basic evolutionary wiring and transform it into something far beyond any prosaic matters of survival and reproduction . . . that’s when humanity is at its best. That’s when we show ourselves to be capable of creating meaning and joy, for ourselves and for one another. That’s when we’re most uniquely human.

And the same is true for sex. Human beings have a deep, hard-wired urge to replicate our DNA, instilled in us by millions of years of evolution. And we’ve turned it into an intense and delightful form of communication, intimacy, creativity, community, personal expression, transcendence, joy, pleasure, and love. Regardless of whether any DNA gets replicated in the process.

Why should we see this as sinful?

What makes this any different from chocolate souffles and King Lear?

She said it here.

That’s what I’m talking about!

Yes, technically once can say as Karl Marx did that humans create for the same reason silkworms spin silk, and technically you can say as Freud and his direct evolutionary-psychology descendants do that humans have sex only to procreate. All the more reason to call those guys REALLY BORING HUMAN BEINGS!