Look. I’m completely familiar with the “but men get raped too” line that crops up pretty much any time women try to discuss their own victimization. (Familiar enough, embarrassingly, that I’ve done it myself.) And you could see how it could become a bit of a drag since, after all, a) two wrongs don’t make a right and b) on top of women’s personal physical experience with sexual assault — which probably closely parallels male victim’s experiences — women have to deal with whole avalanches of social conditions (including, say, honor killings) that male victims aren’t, no way, no how, subjected to no matter how much their immediate friends or family may sympathize with them.

But I’d like to mention one other little factor that I think would tend to dramatically reduce tolerance for but-men-too interjections in women’s venues: that’s just about the only time men bring up sexual assault on men!

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Now to be fair to men, the social climate is such that a) as far as we can tell outside of prison and other coercive, closed environments men and even boys are less frequently than are women, b) when men do become victims their situation is often discounted or downgraded in the eyes of law enforcement officers, journalists, and even family members and spouses, c) victims appear to be even less likely to come forward voluntarily with the exception of d) victims who are so badly physically or emotionally traumatized they can’t avoid seeking medical attention.

If you’re a man and if you really care about victimized men (as evidenced by your willingness, say, to foghorn a discussion in a women’s venue) then the infrequency of reported assaults against men make it all the more important that you speak up when they do…

Either that or spend a good 24 hours of introspection next time you’re ready to post a men-too comment on someone else’s blog.

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Finally, if reports of violent or coerced sexual assault on men are rare then perhaps for reasons listed above reports of so-called “gray area” or “simple misunderstanding” assaults, a.k.a. date rape carried out against men are nearly unheard of. Which is just one reason why I’d like to call people’s attention to yet another conservative Republican party activist now under investigation for sexual impropriety, this time for performing unwanted sex acts on a sleeping man in a relative’s house.

The chairman of the Clark County Republican Party — who last month was elected president of the Young Republican National Federation — has resigned both posts, apparently in the wake of a criminal investigation.

On Tuesday afternoon, Glenn Murphy Jr. e-mailed media outlets a letter announcing his resignation from both positions, citing an unexpected business opportunity that would prohibit him from holding a partisan political office.

However, the Clark County Sheriff’s Department on Friday began investigating Murphy for alleged criminal deviate conduct — potentially a class B felony — after speaking with a 22-year-old man who claimed that on July 31, Murphy performed an unwanted sex act on him while the man slept in a relative’s Jeffersonville home.

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In 1998, a 21-year-old male filed a similar report with Clarksville police claiming Murphy attempted to perform a sex act on him while he was sleeping. Charges were never filed in that case.

Source: Jeffersonville, Indiana’s NewsAndTribute.com

Now if similar complaints had been filed by a woman we might never have heard about them (certainly not in the conservative press) because, unfortunately, such stories are way too familiar with both assailants and victims coming from all walks of life and not just politics. And perhaps, due to the lack of a man-bites-dog/gotcha factor, if similar complaints had been filed against a Democratic Party activist, or a Libertarian or independent’s they too might never have risen to public attention. Maybe so, maybe no.

But if you’re less interested in partisan politics than the issue of unwanted sexual advances, of “miscommunications” when it comes to consent, of major or minor criminal sexual assault on women or men then politics aside we ought to be grateful to see word of such assaults get out however base or exalted the underlying reason. Perhaps over time enough stories will emerge in a short enough time for us all to start recognizing — really recognizing! — that hey, it happens to men too… and therefore if everybody isn’t working to be part of the solution then anybody could fall victim to part of the problem.

(Hat tip for the Murphy story to neoconservative political blogger Jamie Kirchick of The New Republic.)

A funny thing has happened over the last 500 years, at least in Western Civilization. In olden days (and, bitterly, not so olden) rape was considered a crime of property committed not against the victim but against her male custodial guardian (usually her husband or father.) That’s an astonishingly offensive perspective by today’s standards but the had, well, an astonishingly different perspective back then. While it defies credibility today it was once believed that women were utterly amoral when it came to sex. It was believed that, given the opportunity to get away with it they’d offer only token resistance. Instead it was men who were expected to be the moral and sexual gatekeepers not only for themselves but also for the women in their lives. Now was that true? Well, no more true than the equally stupid contemporary “no-sex” class notion that given an opportunity women leap at any chance to avoid having sex.

I don’t believe women were consulted before either belief was established.

Anyway, from the old perspective of victims wanting unasked-for sex to the current perspective of victims “asking for” unwanted sex the legal system has evolved to… pretty much keep victims miserable no matter what.

Yesterday in Slate Magazine, legal correspondent Dahlia Lithwick writes about a new obstacle raised against victims of rape: a Nebraska judge ruled that use of the words “rape, sexual assault, victim, assailant, and sexual assault kit” can’t be used by prosecution attorneys, witnesses, and even the victim because it might be prejudicial against the accused.

Mmmkay.

Lithwick, while not completely unsympathetic to the argument that certain words might prejudice a jury to draw “legal conclusions” in the general case is pretty unsympathetic in this specific one.

The real question for Judge Cheuvront, then, is whether embedded in the word sex is another “legal conclusion“—that the intercourse was consensual. And it’s hard to conclude otherwise. Go ahead, use the word sex in a sentence. Asking a complaining witness to scrub the word rape or assault from her testimony is one thing. Asking that she imply that she agreed to what her alleged assailant was doing to her is something else entirely. To put it another way: If the complaining witness in a rape trial has to describe herself as having had “intercourse” with the defendant, should the complaining witness in a mugging be forced to testify that he was merely giving his attacker a loan?

Read the rest of her analysis here.

I’d like to go one step further and point out that the very word “intercourse” — yet another genteel euphemism for fucking — implies mutual, consensual engagement. For instance:

in·ter·course (Ä­n’tÉ™r-kôrs’, -kōrs’) n Dealings or communications between persons or groups.

Intercourse noun: The exchange of ideas by writing, speech, or signals: communication, communion, intercommunication.

To have inter-course is to run with, to speak with, to build with together. And no matter how one parses it, whether one is the victim or the perpetrator rape is neither conversation nor trade by other means.

Oddly, this is entirely consistent with both the ancient and modern understandings of women’s role in sex — in olden days believed animally incapable of declining an opportunity, in modern days deemed angelically incapable of accepting one, and so in either case incapable of sexual intercourse in the sense of an autonomous individual exercising free will.

Which brings us to insights on the matter from Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon:

The conservative-sexist model of rape is the same one used to define a foul in basketball. Basically, when sexual intercourse happens, the man team has scored a point against the woman team. Each team is allowed some strategies and disallowed others. In basketball, you’re supposed to snatch the ball from the other team, but you can’t cross certain lines or you’ll get a foul. This explains why rape trolls are so eager to find out what the “rules” are, i.e. when they are permitted to force sex. (“Is it rape if she’s drunk? What if she says yes and changes her mind? Is it okay to bully someone into it, so long as you don’t actually hold her down and force her? Are guilt trips okay?, etc.”) If there’s some ambiguity when the referee calls a foul, your teammates (other men) are supposed to clamor to your defense, regardless of whether or not you actually fouled. If the foul is called, then the woman team scores a point (or a free throw in basketball, but you get the idea). The idea that it’s wrong to have sex with someone unless she really, really wants to do it makes about as much sense as saying that you should only be allowed to get the ball in basketball if the defense hands it to you.

This and other pearls of wisdom first appeared here.

While that’s a grimly accurate summary attitudes towards women and sex in general, but of sexual assault in particular: it’s not about choice or mutuality, working together, running together, or discourse. There has to be a defense to beat or it’s no fun! Marcotte prefers to label this the “conservative-sexist” approach. I prefer to call it the “no-sex” class paradigm. (Not least because too many progressives are enmeshed in the paradigm to call it exclusively conservative.)

Marcotte outlines a brilliant alternative that she chooses to call the “liberal-feminist” model (although for framing reasons I’d rather call it “normal.”)

The liberal-feminist view of sex is that it’s not a war or a game, but more of a mutual collaboration, less like a battle and more like playing music. In this model, to be a sexual person is to be a musician and sex is playing your instrument. Sometimes you play by yourself, sometimes you get with others and jam, and sometimes you actually have a band that you have a long-term relationship with. There aren’t winners and losers, but there can be good and bad sex, just like there can be good and bad music. The collaboration model of sex explains why acceptance of homosexuality and kinkiness are generally liberal views. It makes no more sense to call homosexuality immoral than it does to posit that rock is more moral than jazz; it’s all a matter of taste. Homosexuality creates a lot of grief to those who have a fairly strict conservative view of sex because you can’t even tell who’s notsupposed to be the offense and the defense. It’s simply outside of their model, and it creates cognitive dissonance, which often makes the person suffering it want to wipe out the source of the dissonance.

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The very idea that getting someone to play in your band or jam session who is reluctant or openly hostile makes no sense, thus the idea of “winning” in sex by getting a reluctant woman to submit is repulsive to feminists, period. Trying to figure out the rules of when coercion is acceptable and when it’s not makes no more sense than asking if it’s okay to make someone play in your band by holding their kids hostage, threatening to fire them, locking the doors so they can’t leave or simply laying a guilt trip on them. You can vaguely understand the desperation sometimes, if no one will ever play with you, but in the end, it makes no sense. Even if you can force someone to go through the motions, odds are the results are going to suck because they don’t even want to be there. Music is supposed to be fun, so if it’s not fun, it negates the entire point. Same with sex.

Bottom line: I’m not saying that sexual assault will vanish once we discard the stupid “no-sex” class paradigm. I am saying, however, that when we do our relationships will much more closely resemble making music together than attempting to draw fouls. I’m also not saying that after the “no-sex” class thing is history life will be all sweetness and light: we’ll still have Celene Dion and most of us will still play oompa music. But at least we’ll be doing it together instead of one against the other.

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Aside: another reason I didn’t care for the “conservative vs. liberal” divide is that even in the music world not everyone can nor wishes to start a band with just anyone walking down the street. Conservatives can still be conservative in that model, without treating pussy as a resource-extraction problem.