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Wednesday 9 January 2013

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.

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