Are All Men Potential Rapists?

Rape has been in the news this week, with a female TV presenter suggesting that there are ‘levels’ of rape. Opinion has also been divided as to whether a male professional footballer ought to be permitted to play for a club again now that he has been released from prison on licence, having served a term for rape.

These cases have brought back to mind the assertion that ‘all men are potential rapists’. My reactions to this statement are, initially, what you might expect them to be: offence and denial. I am married with four children, two of whom are now young women and I view rape as being totally and inexcusably abhorrent. There are, to my mind, no ‘levels’ of rape. There might be rape and other accompanying crimes, but rape is rape is rape.

I could also reject the premise that all men are potential rapists on the grounds of the inescapable fact that some men, because of age, infirmity or impairment are incapable of rape. I might also object that even if the remaining men could physically commit the crime of rape that says nothing more than all people, physically capable of the act, could commit murder or theft or any other number of offences. The point is whether or not they are morally and psychologically capable of the act.

That is why, initially, I am offended at the thought that I could be considered capable of being a rapist and that is why I leap to my own defence.

To do so, however, is to miss the real point of what is being said when some people (mostly women) state that all men are potential rapists.

In the first instance, it ignores the appalling history of (mostly) male sexual violence perpetrated (mostly) against women. While I might jump on my moral high horse against the thought that I could be viewed as a potential rapist, why, given that history of male sexual violence, should I think that anyone else ought to give me a dispensation?

More pertinently, perhaps, is the fact that in the not so recent past all men (and women) in our society were told that by virtue of being married, a man had a legal right to have sex with his wife whether or not she consented. Just how many ‘decent’ men, who would never have seen themselves as rapists, in effect, raped their wives? How often, through economic, verbal or physical threat has enforced sex taken place within stable relationships? How many men in war-torn societies have acted ‘out of character’ once the normative laws of ‘civilisation’ were removed?

So, when I hear the assertion, ‘all men are potential rapists’, maybe I ought to be less ready to leap to my own defence….

When All Else Fails, Try Football

People who don’t like football (or any other team sport) just don’t get it. They assume that all that’s at stake is a game.  ‘What’s so special about twenty two grown men (or women) chasing after a ball?’, ‘there’s no need to get so worked up about it’, ‘it’s not a matter of life or death’ are but a few of the deprecating intonations muttered week by week by despisers of the beautiful game. Even the late, great Bill Shankly’s rejoinder that football is not a matter of life and death, ‘It is much, much more important that that’, fails to wash with them.

For those of us who happily admit our addiction, the game with its drama, passion, idiocy and nerve-shredding tension is not an escape from reality; it’s a journey to something that lies close to the very heart of what we are. It is war without the bullets, naked screaming loyalty given to an always willing, accepting and reciprocating icon of passion; it is visceral, tribal identification without the odium of political discrimination and social oppression. It provides an object of external devotion that requires the simplest of beliefs, devoid of philosophical and theological doubt. It is chess on grass, poetry in motion, an endless succession of theatres of dreams.

Lest anyone think that I am exaggerating; let me assure you that I am not. For those of us who are stricken with the glorious illness of being football fans, no cure is either sought or possible. All we ask for is your sympathy and the kindness of the odd cup of tea to calm our nerves.

There are, of course, other ways of getting in touch with the primal urges and emotions that football unleashes; there are other ways of touching the dark, hidden recesses of unsavoury antipathy and blood-curdling rivalry, but I suggest that there are few safer, healthier or less destructive ways of doing so.

What a shame that Hitler hadn’t devoted his energies into being a Bayern Munich fan, that football had not been invented to save Joan of Arc from the flames because rival French and English armies were too busy shouting themselves hoarse at a World Cup encounter between the two nations. What a shame that the flag waving jihadists in Iraq and Syria aren’t waving the flag of the Republik of Mancunia, or Chelski, or (and this is pushing it) leaping to their feet in the kop at Anfield.

At the end of a week when murder, discord, greed and political intrigue have once again dominated the headlines, I suggest that a lot of people could have done worse than to have tried a game of football.