Perhaps this would be more accurate if it read "the radical wing of the feminist movement".

Among such extremists, male-female sexual intercourse is itself an act of rape, no matter what the circumstances; it is a violation of the woman's sovereign space, an invasion of her body by an oppressor. Therefore all men are rapists by default. If they were chaste, I suppose they would be downgraded to potential rapists.

"All men are rapists", is about as good an argument as "She was asking for it, she let me buy her a drink".

Yay for hugely incorrect statements.

A correction:
The radical feminist movement does not say that all men are rapists ... they say that all men are potential rapists, for a number of reasons. This statement is not meant by radical feminists to accuse individual men of rape or of being capable of rape. Once again, confusion between commenting on "men" as a group and commenting on individual men occurs.

Although I am not sure that I agree that all men are potential rapists, I think it is important to understand all of the radical feminists' argument. So, I will try to explain the claim.

They say that men, in a society like ours, are socialized toward things like violence, sexual prowess, and domination. Little boys are encouraged to be forceful and demanding, young men are encouraged to become big studs ...

This pattern of encouraging violence and sexual acts in men make it easier to connect violence and sexual acts. Although not all men accept this connection (in fact, most don't), it is a correlation that is made easier to accept in the minds of men in a misogynist society. Further, sex is also considered to be an act of submission by the woman and domination by the man. This correlation encourages men to think that domination IS sex and that sex is not only better with a dominant/submissive paradigm, it is natural that way.

These mixed messages of sex, violence, and domination play into creating a rape culture, a place where men are not only allowed to be violent and dominating, they are rewarded for such behavior.

Because nobody exists outside of society, these socializations contribute to make every man a potential rapist. Other socializations, including religious beliefs, moral beliefs, or a general learned respect for women can combat this socialization and prevent the men actually becoming rapists.

This socialization of men into a rape culture is not intended to place blame on men who have never commited rape, it is to be blamed on society for teaching that these types of actions are acceptable.

The only way we can unlearn socialized behavior is to learn that that socialization exists in the first place. If we want to change the rape culture, then we must realize what messages we are inbibing without even realizing it.

Although I am not sure that I buy this argument, it is important to realize that the radical feminist claim that all men are potential rapists is more complicated than pointing at a man and saying "You would rape me."

Yeah, sure all men are potential rapists, just as much as all women are potential murderesses. We've all got the physical capability to do evil. I have several implements on my desk right now that I could use to brain, stab, maim or terrify someone with if I was so inclined.

I'm not so inclined.

That idiot Greer woman might as well have said "All men potentially watch daytime television" and it would have made no more sense or been any more or less true. The fact is it's completely irrelevant. I could rape someone if I wanted to, but... hello, people... I don't want to. I'm a potential a lot of things, but I'm an actual nice guy. We do exist, you know.

I don't care whether Germaine Greer was misquoted or what. The fact remains that her bald statement was irrelevant, ill-considered and libellious.

So I'm a bloke. Shoot me.

---

Update: plonk_plonk's writeup under Apparently I am a potential rapist has the excellent quote "all men are rapists in the same sense as all women are prostitutes". We have the equipment, that's all.

Owning a monkey wrench does not make one a plumber.
Owning a computer does not make one a hacker.
Owning a bizarre, twisted, unrealistic, bigoted mindset with a side of persecution complex possibly does make one a feminazi.

"Little boys are encouraged to be forceful and demanding, young men are encouraged to become big studs ..." : Odd, that. As a child, I was encouraged to be polite and respectful. As a young man, I was encouraged to be intelligent and friendly.

"This socialization of men into a rape culture is not intended to place blame on men who have never commited rape, it is to be blamed on society for teaching that these types of actions are acceptable." : Ah, yes, prison sentences as encouragement! What a novel theory! Christ in a sidecar....

"...it is important to realize that the radical feminist claim that all men are potential rapists is more complicated than pointing at a man and saying "You would rape me." : And yet somehow, that's exactly how it gets used. The statement itself is an accusatory mudpie flung in the face of the male half of humanity.

Every time I hear this statement it makes me want to give in to those evil male instincts of mine and break something. Who the fuck is this person to tell me that I MIGHT be a rapist? That'd be like some asshole walking up to me on the street and telling me I'll shoot my mother tomorrow morning! Complete and utter bullshit!

Tell you what. Here's an idea. The next time a feminist looks me in the eye and tells me "You're a man, and thus a potential rapist" I'll give her the same uppercut I'd give a guy telling me I'm going to shoot my mother tomorrow morning. I think that's only fair to the guy.

Feminism is a great thing. Radical feminism has accomplished little good in the minds of anyone besides radical feminists.

Is it perhaps, that as a society we have created conditions that have marginalized too many of our men, leaving them with devastated self-worth and feelings of failure? With so much pent up rage and denied accomplishment placed in with the hormones and sexual drive of men should not be surprising to anyone that there would be a natural tendancy to lash out...

And I would hardly be saying just our society - no society has ever been perfect - and these conditions have to have existed in each of them.

I am not excusing the behavior. I think rape is almost worse then murder - the victim has to live on with the memory of the event, producing effectively infinite torture. My point is more towards, are there possibly root causes that extend beyond the traditional radical feminist labeling of male-kind?

Men have raped women for as long as there has been men and women. For some reason there is a drive to take sex by force. Societies have risen and fell and yet this practice exists, therefore our society is not to blame for these phenomena. Our warlike behavior used to serve us by keeping us from rapidly depleting the resources of any one area. We suck, so we live in small groups and spread out, and somehow there is food and clean water enough for everyone! Perhaps violent, forceful sexual activity used to serve us by the whole "propagation of the species" claptrap.

But now, we have civilized for the most part, and people by and large want to be nice, and be treated nicely. Sadly our warlike and propagation drives still exist in the world population, but those drives are slowly being bred out in favor of an ideal of happiness. Though all men may have the potential to rape, not all men have this drive. I for instance, find no trace of this in my fantasies, or in my behavior. I would be incapable of achieving an erection in a situation where I was forcing myself on a woman because it just does not compute. If it is not mutual, it is not sexy.
I WANT TO BE HAPPY AND ALSO WANT HAPPINESS FOR OTHERS!
In addition to this, the thought of rape makes me nauseous, and makes me sad to the very core of my being. Rape is so much worse than murder as it can NEVER be justified.

However...

Not all men are like me and I am not like all men. I am a very kind man who would hurt no one lest they endeavor to hurt me or those I love, but this is not apparent by my physiognomy. I kinda look like a thug. and I have passed by key wielding women at night, I felt the fear and panic as they watched me without looking at me as they scuttle toward safety, and it hurt that someone would think me capable of such a horrific act based solely on my appearance or gender. BUT HEY! I am not the first to run into this sort of situation, nor will I be the last.

Despite the fact that I could take the title of this node as an insult, grunt and stomp and cuss as those do when victimized by an unfair generalization, and rightly so,

THIS UNFAIR GENERALIZATION MAY HAVE PREVENTED RAPE,

and if that is the case, then I can live with my injured sense of identity with the word "men" until the behavior of rape is as extinct as the dodo.

The full version is - "There will always be rape because all men are rapists".

Right. Ok. Just to clarify, I am seeing this saying "All men are rapists and therefore, all men will always rape and have always raped."

I think this statement's a bit too inclusive. Allow me to retort: I could be considered a man. I am not a rapist. I do not rape. I have not raped.

Well, no huge long argument here. If you trust my statement of non-rapism above, I've just disproved the entire concept. End of story. However, allow me to correct the "all men are rapists" statement:

Some men are rapists. They really, really suck, and should be hurt. Badly.

Actually this is a false quote. No major feminist leader has ever said this. It has been most commonly linked to Catharine A. MacKinnon and before her Andrea Dworkin.

The full details are at http://www.snopes2.com/quotes/mackinno.htm.

I have given the most relevant material below:

MacKinnon never made the statement which has been attributed to her. (The quote she never gave has since been variously rendered as "All sex is rape," "All men are rapists," and "All sex is sexual harassment.") Criticisms of MacKinnon's work argue that she implies all men are rapists, but the quote given here was created by MacKinnon's opponents, not MacKinnon herself.

MacKinnon claims the first reference to her alleged belief that all sex is hostile surfaced in the October 1986 issue of Playboy. According to MacKinnon, the statement (which had previously been attached to feminist Andrea Dworkin) was made up by the pornography industry in an attempt to undermine her credibility. It became inextricably linked with MacKinnon's name after she began working with Dworkin in the early 1980s to write model anti-pornography laws.

Dworkin has also disavowed the quote as a false statement circulated by her opponents. She has denied saying that "all sex is rape" or "all men are rapists." When asked to explain her views on the topic, Dworkin replied: "Penetrative intercourse is, by its nature, violent. But I'm not saying that sex must be rape. What I think is that sex must not put women in a subordinate position. It must be reciprocal and not an act of aggression from a man looking only to satisfy himself. That's my point."

MacKinnon was further tied to the quote she did not utter by a March 1999 article by conservative commentator Cal Thomas in which he incorrectly identified her as the author of Professing Feminism and quoted her as saying: "In a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent." Not only is the quote misattributed, but the the putative source, Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales From the Strange World of Women's Studies, is a book criticising the work of MacKinnon and other feminists, written by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge.

A more accurate source this misconception may be Susan Brownmiller's book Against Our Will, published in 1975. In this extensive study of rape, Brownmiller reaches the conclusion that rape "is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear".

It's easy to see how this could be misinterpreted and oversimplified into "all men are rapists". In fact, this is not the point of Brownmiller's statement at all.

Before the 1970s, rape was percieved, both by psychologists and law enforcement agencies as a crime purely about sex. Rapists were theorized to be men who were driven to rape by being denied sex by frigid, "unfeminine" wives, or who were made into sexual deviants by controlling or abusive mothers. Almost no attention was given to rape from the perspective of the victim, or even to examining the statements made by convicted rapists about why they raped.

In her book, Brownmiller discusses the facts of rape, first fully investigated in 1971 by Menachem Amir. Amir discovered several things that completely shattered previous conceptions of rape. First of all, rather than married men with cold wives, most rapists are young, unmarried men. Most rapists reported no other forms of sexual deviancy, but they did show an extreme penchant for violence. When asked why they raped, these rapists indicated, rather than a desire for sexual intercourse, a desire to humiliate and degrade women. Rape was not "a spontaneous explosion of lust", but rather was "usually planned in advance and elaborately arranged".

Brownmiller also theorized that rape is part of a "subculture of violence", a symptom of the machismo that pervades society. Brownmiller concludes:

"A world without rapists would be a world in which women moved freely without fear of men. That some men rape provides a sufficient threat to keep all women in a constant state of intimidation, forever conscious of the knowledge that the biological tool must be held in awe, for it may turn to weapon with sudden swiftness born of harmful intent."

Brownmiller's intent is not to imply that "all men are rapists", but rather that the existence of rape is enough to make all women fear all men as potential rapists.