Not All Rapists Know They're Rapists (Obvious trigger warning is obvious)

“We’re not all trying to be creepy.” - A reader

When you see the aftermath of a lion kill, something in the ether isn’t quite right. You see the blood on the grass and gore in the dirt, but the moment feels as serene as any other. Putting necessity and Mother Nature’s inherent violence aside, lions don’t feel the lives they take. They don’t see the blood around them as gore. All it is to them is a dinner they were entitled to. They saw it. They chased it. They earned it.

You don’t have to be deliberate to be predatory. You don’t need grand goals of doing evil. Hell, you don’t even need to be intentional about your assaults. All it takes to violate someone’s consent is a sense of entitlement and a generous dose of ignorance. People rape without thinking they rape every day. They don’t see the blood around them as a ruined life. All it is to them is something they feel entitled to. They saw it. They chased it. They earned it.

Not everyone knows their sense of entitlement is unjust.

Not all sexual harassers know well enough to characterise their behaviour as harassment.

Not all predators are trying to cause harm. I break glasses by accident every week.

The human brain is remarkably good at denial. It’s even better at ignoring its own flaws. We’re wired to think the best about ourselves, but we’re not always right. Sometimes, our beliefs make us do harmful things, and if your beliefs are funky, how will you ever realise they’re wrong? They’re beliefs, after all. They kinda need to be believed in order to qualify as such.

Maybe you believe you’re entitled to someone’s body once you’ve bought them dinner.

Maybe you think this is a sex site, so everyone who uses it welcomes creepy behaviour.

Maybe you don’t think everyone welcomes creepy behaviour. You just believe they should leave if they expect respect.

Maybe you don’t realise how disruptive your consent violations are.

Maybe you weren’t intentional about raping someone. You just wanted to have sex with them badly enough to ignore their resistance.

Maybe you think your female gender makes you immune from violating consent because all men are up for sex all of the time.

Maybe you think the blood around you is just a can of paint someone spilt this morning, but maybe it’s a destroyed life.

On Fetlife, I’ve heard my share of people defining their sexual behaviour without realising they were describing a violation. BDSM is complicated. Kink consent is even more complicated. In this realm, the only way to keep the blood off the grass is by educating ourselves. If you haven’t done that, you could traumatise someone.

If you value your “need” for sex more than you value others’ needs for boundaries, you’re going to do evil things. Just last week, I met a man who called members of his community predatory for not having sex with him. He slapped a “bigotry” label on their disinterest, and that was all he needed to fuel his sense of entitlement.

Yesterday, he said his community had wrongly accused him of being a sexual predator.

We’re remarkably competent at believing things that aren’t true.

I once saw balloon-sized bubbles floating all over my garden. At the time, I thought it was a religious experience. Now I know I have epilepsy and it was a seizure. The brain is a powerful thing. It’s also an exceptional liar, so if you hate women (or men), your contempt might just be leaving blood on the grass.