But this is one way men ARE victims of Rape Culture. In the same way a child is taught to kill as a child solider in Sudan, for example. They may grow up to commit atrocities but they are also victims of their upbringing. The way to fix it is to fix the upbringing.

Oh wow am I glad you did post it, Britni. I got a total breakthrough on this too.

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 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) And the problem with number five is that the tacit sentence has another clause: "… but I nevertheless feel no obligation to do anything about."

There's a lot more that's shaking out of this for me. I'll have to think about it. A lot.

Thanks, Britni!

p.s. another thing that shakes out, it occurs to me, is you know how men tend to value a relationship in proportion to how hard he thinks he has to work for it? To the extent that's true he's going to be personally frustrated by the additional layer of mistrust but… he's going to feel more "worthy" if he can "win" a woman over in spite of that. Not a good dynamic. I've definitely got to think about this more.

I'll admit, the "all men are potential rapists" did bug me a little at first but, then again, to *me* any man really could be a rapist.

How do I know the stranger who was looking at me weird wouldn't try to hurt me? How do I know the group of guys that honked and howled at me from their truck, when I was walking alone, weren't going to turn right around and try to hurt me? After hearing horror story after horror story about the police in the lawless small town I live in, how could I trust that a male police officer wouldn't hurt me? How could I trust that my dad, my brothers or my uncles wouldn't hurt me after hearing about friends whose trusted family members sexually abused them? I can't and that's the fucking point I think Britni was trying to make with the "all men are potential rapists" thing.

No, not all men are rapists or ever will be, but we can't know which ones are and which ones aren't. Which men are the good guys who mean us no harm, but might just be a little socially awkward, and which are the bad guys who *do* intend on hurting us? We can't.

As C&B mentioned, Jeffrey Dahmer (and let's not forget Ted Bundy, who used a similar approach when luring in young women) looked like a "normal guy" but he was anything but. How do I know whether the strange man I meet while walking alone is a Ted Bundy or just a random guy who happened to be walking in the same direction as me?

I also don't doubt at all that men are victims of Rape Culture, as Jillinois said. A culture such as this isn't good for anyone, male or female.

I highly recommend William Pollack's book "Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood." From the description, "Pollack has seen behind the stoic masks of troubled, modern boys as they struggle to cope with the mixed messages, conflicting expectations, and increasingly complex demands they receive from our evolving society. 'New research shows that boys are faring less well … that many boys have remarkably fragile self-esteem, and that the rates of both depression and suicide in boys are frighteningly on the rise.'"

I don't think the solution in women pointing out how men can counteract these views, as SevurdLove suggests… but how we as a culture can care for both our young girls AND boys, raising them to see Rape Culture as an antiquated, ridiculous concept, much like segregation of the 1950s.

My issue mostly comes when women question your intentions when you are basically helping them and in the process of walking away or they have been friends for several years and get paranoid over something another man did. I need trust in my relationships, but I don't get angry over the situation, I might just question "why" things are this way, but I make a point to distance myself from women who think that way…

On more then one occasion I have seen a woman overly paranoid to the point they cause an innocent guy serious damage to his reputation when nothing was done at all, he simply did something along the lines of returning the credit card she dropped or helped her through issues with her overly abusive boyfriend. Too much positive attention MUST mean he is after ONE THING. Admittedly he might have feelings but that doesn't immediately mean he is going to rape them.

Guys actually run into this more then women would like to admit, hence there is a bit of agitation over the assumption that THEY might be like those other guys. Again I am just repeating my point.

Either way you word it (Brit's way or CaB's way), it's "offensive," or more accurately, just not sociologically logical. All people are potential murderers. Etc. You can go on and on with that thinking. But in the long-run, I don't think it does any good.

BUT. The points that both of you make, including Schwyzer, are excellent. I just do not like the phrasing of All X are X at all. It's distracting. We spend more time and energy trying to explain or understand these statements when we could be focusing on the broader picture.