Rape Apologism: Why is it so prevalent in the GC fauxminist movement?

CW: Rape and sexual assault

Like far too many women, I’ve experienced been raped and sexually assaulted. And — like many queer women — on some of those occasions the perpetrator was a woman.

As a society we rightfully recognise rape for the horrific act it is. As a society we accept that rape is an act of unwanted sexual intercourse forced upon us. As a society over the course of the past two decades we’ve begun to accept that the survivors of rape where the perpetrator is a woman are no less harmed than if the rapist had been a man.

Yet despite all of that it’s far too common to find both women and men within the GC fauxminist movement claim that women can’t rape. They hide behind out-of-date UK legislation that owes almost nothing to the commonly accepted understanding of what rape is — legislation that is so out of date that it doesn’t recognise that women can be rapists in their own right.

Even when asked if they accept in the common understanding and use of language that women can and do rape people, almost all GC fauxminists will claim that isn’t true, hiding behind a technical definition of law and deliberately refusing to engage with the common understanding of the term ‘rape’.

Even when it’s pointed out to them that their claim about women not being able to rape rests upon a law that also states that any wife who claimed her husband raped her prior to 1991 must be lying, as UK law didn’t recognise that marital rape existed, almost all GC fauxminists will still cling to UK law as if it’s the only valid description of rape that exists.

But why? Why do GC fauxminists cling desperately to this? Why do they call the survivors of rape by women liars when they say they’ve been raped? Why do they try and discount the experiences of women who love women when we say we’ve been raped?

The answer is — sadly — simple. Recognising that women can and do rape means that it’s no longer possible for GC fauxminists to claim that women can’t be rapists, only victims. It means that GC fauxminists can’t tar all men as being potential rapists and therefore all men must be considered as potentially being dangerous, whilst also claiming that women can’t be rapists and therefore must always be protected from men.

And it takes away their ability to lump trans women in with men as potential rapists and cry, “Won’t somebody think of the women and children?!”

This is at the heart of it. Accepting that women can and do rape people means having to accept that anybody can be the perpetrator of rape. It means trying to lean on the argument of, “Real Women can’t rape, trans women can, therefore trans women can’t be Real Women”, is no longer something a GC fauxminist can use.

The refusal of GC fauxminists to accept that women rape is ideolgoically motivated rape apologism used solely in the pursuit and drive to label trans women as “being dangerous men”.

By fuelling a narrative that paints trans women as being dangerous predators they fuel a narrative and demand that trans women be segregated from other women.

They fuel a narrative that paints trans women as being dangerous predators, encouraging an attitude and narrative that trans women should be targeted for vigilante action to protect Real Women.

They fuel a narrative that paints trans women as being dangerous predators so that they can try to force through legislative change that would see trans women stripped of dignity, equality, and rights.

And they do all of this wilfully and eagerly, despite the harm it does to women. Ignoring the voices of wlw who talk of their experiences of being raped by a woman dismisses those voices. It silences us, denying us a voice to speak authentically of our own experiences. It erases our experiences from the public record, hiding what has been done to us in the way that the sexual abuse of children was all to often hidden in the 80s and earlier.

These aren’t the actions of feminists. Feminists don’t silence the voices of women who talk of their experiences of being raped by a woman. Feminists don’t claim that the rape can’t have happened because of a technicality of an out-of-date UK law. Feminists don’t claim that women who have been raped by women should shut up about what they’ve experienced and to stop deceiving people.

It is why the so-called, self-proclaimed feminists of the GC movement aren’t feminists. It’s why it’s a hate movement. One that’s not just deeply transphobic and transmisogynistic, but also misogynistic to its core.

It is why GC fauxminism is so dangerous to the rights of women.