War...huh...good grief

Just when I was starting to think that 2013 had begun relatively quietly for feminist bloggers looking for something to get riled about, this op-ed by Ryan Smith landed in my Twitter feed, on the back of the recent decision by the Pentagon to allow the USA’s women soldiers to serve in combat. Now, I am all for critical commentary, and I acknowledge that the writer of the piece has served in recent combat, which it’s fair to say that I have not (leaving aside my agonised kneejerk liberal reaction to warfare, the closest I get to violence is on a badminton court), but as other commentators have pointed out, the actual argument of the piece is perplexing at best and thoroughly ludicrous at worst.

What the author seems to be implying is that women do not, or cannot, understand what ‘real’ war is about, that it is ugly, revolting, and brutal, with unsanitary and debilitating conditions for the troops. There is much mention in his piece of the horrors of diarrhea and urination (I wonder whether he has ever changed a nappy?), not to mention filth and dried blood. Yes dear reader, it does somewhat segue into precious bodily fluids territory. I also find it really curious that his main argument about combat centres not on the psychological difficulties which might arise from, you know, violently killing other humans, but essentially from the harshness of camp conditions. Miss the point much? But I digress. Basically, I just found the whole piece extraordinary and ludicrous, for several reasons.

Firstly, the idea that women simply by dint of the fact that they are women would baulk at severe physical debilitation isn’t just common or garden sexism but also so divorced from reality as to be worthy of ridicule. There are many, many different women in the world and many different ways to be a woman; I am sure it is fair to say that there are some of us who are delicate flowers much given to swooning at the merest whiff of gore; that is undoubtedly true because spectrum of humanity yadda yadda. But for every Tinkerbell there is a Boudicca – how many female doctors and nurses faint away at a compound fracture on a trauma ward, for example? How many women and girls walk for days in 45 degree heat to bring back a pail of water for their village? Or for 20 hour days in a sweatshop? How many are broken by abuse and disease in the sex trafficking trade? The idea that women cannot cope with or are not used to physical trauma, either the experience of it or the observation of it is, were it not so fucking tragic, laughable.

Secondly, and this is such a big rhetorical miss that the words banjo and barn door come to mind, does the writer really think that women do not already experience war? What would he say to the hundreds of thousands of women raped in combat? To those displaced and made destitute? To those massacred because they belong to the ‘wrong’ side? This is a very simple point that I would not have thought needed making, but it is not just enlisted soldiers who experience war. Smith's point, that war would be all too much for the lil’ ladies, utterly betrays the enforced experience of hugely traumatic conflict for thousands upon thousands of women (and children, and men, since the dawn of fucking time. Well done, humanity).

Lastly, he says that relieving yourself in front of your fellow troops is “humiliating enough”, and that we can “really only imagine the humiliation of being forced to relieve yourself in front of the opposite sex”. Er, I don’t know about you, gentle reader, but for those of us who have ever been in a long term relationship, had children, met children, grown up with siblings, gone to school, played with other kids, or just gotten really, really into watersports, this is beyond parody. Like, really? That’s what would traumatise you? He goes on to say that it would be “distracting and potentially traumatizing to be forced to be naked in front of the opposite sex”. As Lauren Wolfe has pointed out with far less sarcasm than I am able to, surely it is the fucking WAR which is traumatic – the idea that weeing in front of your colleagues when you haven’t washed in a month is the problem is FUCKING RIDICULOUS. I’ve been to festivals more traumatic.

This entire piece just plays into the tired (holy fuck am I tired of it) and ignorant stereotype of the innocent, unblemished woman, who must be protected from the real muck of the world at all costs. How risible. If only we fucking were. As for the idea that women might be traumatised by combat, I would argue that this has nothing to do with being a woman, and everything to do with being human – with as much capability  and resilience as the next soldier.

Rape culture is everyone’s problem

(Trigger warning for rape and sexual violence all over the whole damn page)

Well, I was hoping to resume blogging in 2013 with a nice fluffy (by my standards) piece to ease us gently into bleakest January, on the perils of dating while feminist (be patient my loves, this may still come, I’m thinking about it). But then over the holidays, as more and more gruesome details emerged about the horrific gang rape and murder of an Indian woman in Delhi on the 16th of December my festive cheer dissipated somewhat and so here I am banging on about rape again, in only the second week of the year. And I do find myself wondering, how many more times will I write about rape and rape culture before this year is out? Before my life is out? How many times will other feminists and commentators write about it, worry at it, will it to be destroyed once and for all? Will it ever go away, this culture of enabling rape and rapists while simultaneously erasing, belittling, and reinterpreting the experience of victims? When will it end? Will it end? Do we actually have the will and conviction in human to society to make it end? By the way, that last question is the scariest one, for reals.

I’ve asked before in these pages what it will take to change culture, albeit that on that occasion I was talking about access to abortion. And it’s a difficult question, because it assumes there must be some point where the stakes can go no higher. That’s what an optimist would think. I am not so sure about optimisim at the moment, though. The woman who was raped in India was also mutilated to the point where she suffered severe, and in her case irreperable, internal injuries. I am going to be more explicit in explaining exactly what happened to her because I think it’s important not to use euphemisms when discussing things like this, but I’m trigger-warning this next paragraph again because what happened is completely horrific.

She was apparently travelling on a bus with a friend, when she was attacked by five men and one minor, one of whom is reported to have been the driver of the bus. Then they beat her with an iron bar, raped her with that and pulled out her intestines in the process. They also beat her friend with the same iron bar, as he was trying to protect her. She and him were then stripped naked and dumped by the side of the road. According to her friend, who has now given a television interview, they were left unattented by passers-by for nearly half an hour. The hospital where she eventually died is a leading institute in treating catastrophic multiple organ injuries. Rather like a field hospital in a warzone, you might think.

I don’t know about you, dear readers, but at first it seemed to me that this was extraordinarily violent. But then I remembered that in fact there is nothing extra-ordinary about it. Violent rapes where the victim is mutilated to the point of maiming or death are a hallmark of, for example, rape as a war crime – here is a sobering article on the subject of rape in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which will confirm this – but they also happen in ‘isolated’ (excuse me while I choke on my own laughter) incidents such as the one in India – here is a similarly awful incident from Ukraine, where the victim also died of her injuries. So the Indian rape hasn’t really raised any stakes at all – it is just repeating a template which has long been in existence. And really, what stakes are higher than maiming or death? Perhaps only torture would fit that bill – and we know that rape is also used as a form of torture too.

But you know, for some people no rape will ever be brutal, or revolting, or lethal enough for the message to stop being, ‘don’t get raped’, and start being, ‘don’t rape’. After the Indian rape victim had died, some delightful commenters had plenty of victim-blaming bullshit things to say about what had happened. Their comments, or a version of them, will be entirely familiar to anyone who has ever spent any time at all on the internet or IRL talking about rape, because they are tired but persistent ideas which crop up all the time in our discussions of rape. Ideas like don’t wear a skirt. Ideas like don’t use public transport. Ideas like for your own safety. Ideas like rape-rape. In fact the list is so endless, so tirelessly inventive in adding more and ever more restrictions to (mostly) women’s lives in the false name of protecting their safety that it is easily satirised. But the thing about satire is that it’s a bit like irony, i.e. it’s not really satire if, you know, it’s actually happening. In our refusal to confront the real reason that people get raped the reason itself gets lost in the mire, but it is this - people get raped because rapists rape them, and all too often get away with it.

We could talk for hours, weeks, years even over what exactly constitutes rape culture – for me this from Shakesville  is a pretty comprehensive definition and one to which I’ve linked before – but really what it boils down to is the difference between the two messages, don’t get raped, and don’t rape. What do we teach our children? Don’t get raped. Why are we not teaching them the other message?

Her name was Jyoti Singh Pandey. She is one of millions, and she is no different to you or I, except for the fact that she is dead. She deserved life, and dignity, and safety, just as we do. Oh, and she did live in a warzone. India is not at war but rape culture is a global war, with just as much violence, propaganda and entrenchment as any other. But the difference is that we cannot fight this war with any old weapons-grade plutonium. The way we fight this war is by believing victims, by calling out rape jokes, by, if we have the strength for it, reporting sexual violence, by supporting those who do and those who are unable to, by demanding more from our police and our judiciary, by speaking out, and speaking up. Unless you come armed with smallpox and religion, you cannot change a culture from outside of it. You can only change it by ditching your complicity and lending your voice to the chorus.