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.
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