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.

Professional Overreacting

Well folks, I’m back from the Balkans (holiday) and ready to smash the gender binary and dismantle the kyriarchy in my lil ol’ corner of the interwebs! Bet you’re pleased? Let’s get started.

So of course while I was away gasping in awe at Russian Orthodox churches, stunning lakes, and ludicrously low beer prices, the world continued to grind away. I heard there was a devastating storm, and then an American election? More of that later though, because I’m keen to focus on an issue both global and domestic today – I’m sure the USA can live without my commentary for another week or so.

Everyday Sexism (and if you are not already following them on Twitter then by gum you bally well should be), have an op-ed piece in the Independent today which touches on the idea that sexism is still a socially-acceptable prejudice. Now, I don’t think that it's the only socially-acceptable prejudice which we need to tackle, given how many times a week I hear the word ‘gay’ or ‘retard’ being used as a pejorative (that list is by no means exhaustive), but I want to expand on the point the piece was making about sexism towards women, partly because it’s Twitter-topical but chiefly because it touches on one of the aspects of sexism which absolutely INFURIATES me – that women* are generally and habitually overreacting to sexism.

Firstly, I would like to know what the definition of overreacting is? If someone insults you or otherwise does something damaging to you and you ignore them, I would think of that as non-reactive (NB by non-reactive I don’t mean neutral, as neutral implies not being bothered at all whereas non-reactiveness can be read as a decision to ensure one’s personal safety). Anything beyond that is a reaction. So where is the mythical cut-off point? I would imagine if someone groped my arse and I murdered them then that would be a clear overreaction (jokes aside), but below the level of physical retaliation, what counts as an overreaction? Because it seems to me that the very act of saying anything negative at all about sexism is deemed an overreaction. Read the comments (or don’t, EVER, if you value your sanity) under any piece expressing even the most mild feminist view and I will pay you ten pounds** if no-one tells the writer (or other commenters) that they are overreacting. David Cameron’s infamous, “calm down, dear” is a prime (and very public) example of this fuckery. Why are we so uptight all the time about sexism? Why can’t we see that sometimes it’s all a bit of fun, a bit of a laugh with the lads? What’s wrong with us?

What’s wrong with us? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me. I am sick and fucking tired of being made to treat sexism as if it were a joke. Would you tell a black person to calm down about a shop selling golliwog dolls? Why not? After all, they’re a bit of harmless fun, aren’t they?! A children’s toy! STOP OVERREACTING. Do you see what I’m getting at here? We all (or most of us, hopefully), innately understand that while golliwog dolls are unlikely in themselves to bring about a new era of apartheid, they symbolise one race’s casual and brutal disdain for another’s. Their intentions might be harmless fun, but their reality is sinister. We can see this, so why can’t we see it for sexism, and why are we unwilling to even engage with the idea that sexist behaviour is fucking damaging? For women, a lot of the time, I think it’s because we are afraid not of actually overreacting, but of being labelled in that way. No-one wants to ruin the fun, do they?*** Apart from humourless feminists that is! Ho ho.

Now I want to tell you a lovely little story which illustrates this conundrum. Once upon a time (longer ago than I care to remember in fact), I was walking along a residential street in an undodgy area of London towards the tube, to go out in town. It was about 7pm, but because it was November it was already dark. I had a skirt on, stripey knee socks, and boots – the skirt was short, and the boots were chunky, because back then I was a bit of a goth (in fact I was heading to the legendary Intrepid Fox for a night of drinking cider and listening to the Cult). I had headphones in, so I didn’t hear the group of men (boys?) come up behind me. Maybe if I had I would have avoided what happened next, but probably not, because I suspect they were pretty determined to do what they did anyway, to whichever woman happened to be walking along the street that night. Anyway, one of them grabbed me from behind and slid his fingers up between my legs. Right the way up – I don’t mean he was just checking the close shave of my bikini line. I jumped, and he and his mates laughed and ran away.

And do you know what I did? Absolutely nothing. I carried on walking to the tube station, where I didn’t tell the station agent. In fact I can’t even remember if I told my friends, including my boyfriend at the time, when I got to the pub. I certainly didn’t tell the police. I hadn’t seen the faces of any of the group who had assaulted me, so I wouldn’t have been able to identify them anyway. Besides, by that point (I was nineteen), I had already started to buy into the bullshit of this kind of thing happens all the time, and don’t make a fuss, and at least they didn’t rape me. As in, you’re overreacting. And although this was probably the “worst” thing of this kind that has happened to me (yet) given that had I not had knickers on there would have been genital contact; I completely sympathise with the Everyday Sexism tweeter who tweeted that this kind of thing just begins after a while to register as “not really serious”, because I could tell you of literally dozens of similar incidents which have happened to me, and I am one individual who is lucky enough to live in a fairly safe, fairly liberal first world society.

My point is, what would you call my reaction? Because I wouldn’t call it an overreaction – I did what I explained in the paragraph above, non-reaction – partly as a self-preservation method and partly because at nineteen I had already learned the mantra of not overreacting.

Well, you know what? FUCK THAT FUCKING SHIT. Fuck that dangerous bullshit right back where it belongs, and what is more THREE HEARTY CHEERS  for overreacting, because if overreacting means publicly objecting to the continual, relentless, publicy ignored and sometimes actively encouraged damage and debasement of women then I am all bloody for it. To everyone who’s reacted with a pithy epithet to a cat-call, to everyone who’s told a guy to fuck off in a nightclub when he’s ground his semi against your backs, to everyone who’s called out the sexist joke in the work meeting, I SALUTE YOU ALL, and to all the rest of us who have our days when we can’t do that, when we are too upset or afraid or already damaged to react, we’ve got your fucking back too, because no-one on earth deserves this daily fuckery and I really hope that one day society will finally, finally understand that it is not ok for it to be like this.

 

The only way that is going to happen is if we keep calling it out, if instead of avoiding “overreacting” we make sure that it is in fact one of our main priorities. Think I should calm down, dear? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

 

 

 

*By this I don't exclude the differently-gendered, but I want to talk about the kind of sexism which is directed towards those who have been identified (erroneously or not) as women by the person or people perpetrating the sexism.

**Not really.

***For anyone who would like an absolutely kick-ass and vital illustration of this problem, I urge everyone reading this to go and read this blog post.

Thoughts on Jill Meagher

Jill Meagher, or what will it take for you to believe us?

Yesterday tigtog blogged on the Hoyden About Town website that the Australian police are now holding a man in custody whom they expect to charge with the rape and murder of Jill Meagher, the Irish woman who went missing sometime in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Earlier, there had been a few rebuttals and reposts around the interwebz to Clementine Ford’s conversation centering on the same incident on Twitter. Then there was this post from Ed Butler. I want to be as fair as I can to him by saying that in no way do I think he is the only guy who thinks like this, and in fairness, he does go on to redeeem himself somewhat in the following comments, and in less problematic posts which sandwich that one – go and read them and you’ll see what I mean. So this isn’t a witch hunt by any means. But the post I’ve picked hits on so many bullshit bingo points that it’s the perfect example of a very familiar response that women often get when they complain about the violence committed against them – but it’s not fair to me because I’m not a rapist and now I feel yucky. And anyway you are just totally overreacting. Waaaah!

First of all, I want to address the ‘it’s not fair’ argument.  Look, I totally get that it must royally suck to walk down the street late at night, say, knowing that at least a few women will be automatically wary of your presence. That’s not nice for anyone, is it? But, and while I am officially not a fan of the Pain Olympics™, my guess is that it sucks more to be afraid of being raped and/or murdered. Or, you know, actually raped and murdered. If you are walking down the street feeling, as Butler states, disgusted with yourself, and you are not a rapist/violent attacker, you might want to take a step back and instead of blaming women (or the media) for making you feel like a rapist, maybe start blaming the rapists who rape and the society that very often lets them get away with it.

Secondly, I want to address the other argument – the ‘you’re overreacting’ argument – because it is this that is lethally dangerous. Butler compares the risk of attack to the same kind of risk as getting in a car crash or eating bad sushi. I want to make this extremely plain to anyone who might have the merest shred of doubt about it: rape and murder do not happen by accident. You cannot be accidentally raped. In English law, you also cannot be accidentally murdered – if you were murdered accidentally, that would be manslaughter. Of course, the other side of that is that you can be deliberately poisoned, or deliberately run over, but I think we would agree that while those things happen, they are not the kind of things you would really take general everyday precautions over, unless you were a character from Game of Thrones or a Mafia boss. So the comparison itself is faulty – not eating sushi which looks a bit dodgy is a decision which is up to you. Rape and murder, and I can’t quite believe I am having to say this, are inherently not up to the victim.

See, the thing that makes me table-gnawingly, mouth-frothingly fucking FURIOUS about this kind of response is the idea that we don’t have that much to fear. I wonder if Butler has ever read any rape and murder statistics? It seems as if the answer to that is no, and in fact he goes on to clarify that he is not going to demean his argument with something as filthy as data (I quote), “I’m not digging around data to verify something so unverifiable”. Right, because he can presumably afford to be lazy and complacent about this? Rape and murder victims perhaps do not share that privilege.

I think what he is trying to get at is that the risk of stranger-rape is very low. I want to stress this, because it’s important that we get our facts straight – he is right about this. The risk of being raped by a stranger in Australia is low – you can see the statistics for yourself. But this misses the larger point that the risk of suffering sexual violence seems to me to me brain-crushingly high. The likelihood of suffering physical or sexual violence in your lifetime if you are a woman in Australia is higher than 1 in 2. That does not seem like a minimal risk to me, and it also seems to be a wholly valid reason for being nervous when you are anywhere, not just on the streets. As commenters to his piece pointed out, you can evaluate risk and go about your business at the same time – telling people not to be scared is hugely patronising and thought-policing – and if all women really thought all stranger men were rapists (rather than potential rapists), then they would never leave the house.

The thing is, telling people not to be scared also sends out another, more insidious message – you’re hysterical, you’re gullible, you’re making yourself into a victim, you’re weak, you’re overreacting.

Jill Meagher isn’t hysterical or overreacting. What Jill Meagher is is dead.

What will it take for you to believe our fears are valid? What will it take?

Solidarity Does Not Undermine You

Last time I blogged I wrote about Twitter. I also wrote about some abject tomfuckery in relation to powerful male political figures' attitudes to rape. In the same week, the hashtag #menagainstrape began to trend. As you can see, if you have a quick look at the tweets underneath that hashtag, this had variable outcomes.

This New Statesman piece by Caroline Criado-Perez highlights some of the ambivalence that many had towards the hashtag - some welcoming it as a show of solidarity in a week where there was a whole fucking shitload of rape apologia going on, some bemoaning it as, variously:

• Obvious, as it is the 'default position' - ha ha, no-one actually supports or defends rape, right? RIGHT? Nope!
• Undermining of 'real' rape - well, I can tweet to that because I'm definitely against rape-rape. You know, the kind of rape I define on my terms. Yep, can defo get behind that.
• Making it ALL ABOUT THE MENZ - feminism needs us, man! They can't do it without us!

The NS piece chiefly discusses that last point - and I will get to that in another post for the sake of everyone's sanity - but I want to discuss the first two...er, first, because while I think there are nuanced arguments to be made about point three, for my money the most important aspect of this discussion is the first.

No-one actually supports or defends rape, right?

Of the innumerable tear-your-eyelashes-out-with-rage conversations I have had in pubs in or around the subject of feminism, this old chestnut gets hoarked out at almost every given opportunity. The default position is that every decent human being* automatically rejects rape, in the same way that they would reject murder, genocide, child abuse and other heinous crimes, and self-righteous flabbergastation follows when one deigns to suggest otherwise. But you know what? I don't fucking buy it. Whether or not you believe we live in a rape culture (full disclosure: I do, and I think those two posts absolutely fucking NAIL why, and how) it doesn't take long to remember that conversation you've had with someone, possibly one of your mates, where the phrase, "she was asking for it" was used. Or when you were at work and someone told a rape joke. Or when someone you know uses a term like "grey rape", "rape-rape", "real rape". Maybe you've used those terms too, or told one of those jokes, or defended a footballer or friend or public figure with some variation on the but she was asking for it line. I probably have too - as Billy Wilder once wrote, nobody's perfect, and no-one likes (to be) the humourless feminist, right lads?

My point is that saying things like that doesn't make you a rapist. Raping people makes you a rapist. But it sure as fuck doesn't pitch you against rape. If you are using the she was asking for it line, in a conversation about rape, then you are defending rape. If you are qualifying terms, such as "rape-rape", then you are supporting rape, because in effect what you are saying is that only some rapes count as rape. In fact what we do in culture and society is defend and support rape all the goddamned time - when we use the term 'sex-scandal' when reporting on a rape case, when we can't believe that someone whose work we admire and like is a rapist, when we, over and over and FUCKING OVER again, blame victims for their own assaults. This is not a society which is against rape. So the argument that we don't need to state we are against something because it is axiomatically true for all humans? All that is is bullshit - comforting bullshit, but bullshit nonetheless.

Rape-Rape, or Where do you Stand on the Rape Apologist's Sliding Scale of Bullshit?

Ah, rape-rape. Helpfully coined by Whoopi Goldberg (you broke my heart there, Whoopi), during a discussion about Polanski, the idea behind this is that some rapes are worse than others. I believe the logic goes something like: the crime of rape exists on a scale which has, for example, waking up to find a current sexual partner's penis inside you at one end, and a violent attack which leaves victims badly physically hurt or even dead at the other. The implication is that events that happen near one end are not as serious as events that happen at the other. On the face of it, this is difficult to dispute - most people would agree that ending up dead is a worse outcome than not ending up dead (euthanasia notwithstanding).

But it isn't really as simple as that. The truth is that every crime is different, and of course there will be some instances of, say, robbery, which end in violent death, and some which end in losing a tenner. The actual point is that the shared element is the crime element. Rape is a crime, we have laws to say so and define it, and sentencing guidlines which take into account the 'severity' of the crime. That is to say, rape is a crime and anything on that scale is rape. It doesn't actually matter if you think one example is 'worse' than another - it is all rape. Its position on the scale does nothing to legitimise it either way - it is rape. The scale also isn't exactly kind to victims, as it implies that there is a kind of Pain Olympics going on with rape - which is just? Fucking gross and wrong. If you have been raped, any feeling you have is legitimate (including not being affected).

So that's the issue I have with the idea that a hashtag, which is throwaway and perhaps lacking gravitas, somehow undermines 'real' rape. Because if you've been raped? I think that makes it very fucking real.


Solidarity Does Not Undermine You

To conclude, the point of my tirade here is that I support men tweeting to the #menagainstrape hashtag, because I do see it as a massive show of solidarity. Both of those words are important. The solidarity goes without saying - because for men** to recognise that there is a problem, with rape apologia and with rape itself, is a huge show of recognition to the victims of rape. It is saying, we believe you. It is saying, we call this shit out. It is saying, this shit is fucking disgusting. I am unapologetically ALL FOR THAT.  And the second word is important precisely because of it being a show - it is visible. Making your solidarity visible is hugely important, because it means people can see who their allies are. And you know what happens when you ally yourself to something else? It makes you stronger, not the opposite. #menagainstrape, your solidarity does not undermine you.










* However the bejesus we define that.
** I know there are a whole bunch of people who will point out - quite rightly - that men are not the only gender which perpetrates sexual assault. But as you can see from the links underneath the Wiki entry (more reliable than Wikipedia itself, for obvious reasons), they are in the overwhelming majority of assailants - as high as 99% in some social data surveys.

Thoughts on Akin and Assange

It has been a grim week for those of us with a uterus.

Here in the UK, Julian Assange gave an Evita Peron-style address from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he is holed up in a bid to fight his extradition to Sweden to face charges of rape, sexual molestation and sexual assault. Assange has many supporters both in the UK and globally, both high-profile and not, and boy howdy have they been at work both outside the embassy and in the press and social media sites. Some of my favourite arguments in support of Assange are as follows:

• that the case against him is a "witch hunt" (various places but in one of the first few comments under Owen Jones's excellent comment piece in the Independent )
• that once a woman consents to sex with a man, any occasion following that is essentially fair game (this is the gist of George Galloway's argument)
• That extradition to Sweden somehow = extradition to the USA, which in turn = execution. Yeah, that one is pretty fruity so it's perhaps not entirely surprising to see Michael Moore and Oliver Stone endorsing it.

Over in God's Own Country, otherwise known as the USA, things are gearing up for a Presidential election. This often brings the mind-bogglingly stupid out of the woodwork, and this week was no exception, only this time the candidate in question wasn't a screaming fanatic waving a God Hates Fags sign on an abortion clinic picket line somewhere in deepest Nowheresville but the Missouri District Congressman Todd Akin. I think Todd must have fallen asleep in his high school biology lesson* because he seems to be confusing the reproductive organs of genetically female humans with those of ducks. Yup...ducks. There are takedowns of this stupidity all over the internet so I won't labour it, other than to highlight the important points from that particular canard (sorry):

• According to Akin, rape victims can't get pregnant, because, and I stress to you that this is a direct, in-context quote: "the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down".
• While you are reeling from that stunner, I am going to hit you with another hook - the above mangling of a basic human physiology lesson was based on aforesaid rape being a legitimate rape (again I am quoting). Imma let that one sink in for you.

So, another week, another fuckton of garbage lies and rape apologia. But I want to say something about it all because there is a massive fucking Venn diagram in the middle of all this (you might call it Occupy Misogyny ha ha GEDDIT) and it is the colour of rape.

There is much online whining about feminists and feminism being obsessed with rape, and it is absolutely true that some of the most important and powerful work being done in the name of the feminist cause, especially on the interwebz, is to do with debunking rape myths and calling out the rape culture. My peoples, THERE IS A REASON FOR THIS. Rape is a crux issue for feminism, not because it is an often violent crime which is hugely skewed towards one gender perpetuating violence against another** (this is what makes it an issue for humanity), but because it crystallises a central feminist argument - that one of the things that patriarchy has done is to legitimise rape (ha ha no Todd, I don't mean it the way you do).

While there is much huffing and puffing that OF COURSE we take rape seriously! Rapists are vile! Ewww are you trying to suggest that we SUPPORT rape?! the events of this week just do not bear that out. A man who is a suspect in a rape trial garners support essentially for running away. A high profile politican suggests that if you are penetrated in your sleep by someone not wearing a condom, who carries on thrusting regardless even after you have asked him to stop and put one on, you have not been raped - you've just been a victim of "bad sexual etiquette". Another politician suggests, on television, that the female anatomy can reject the sperm of a rapist - but only if he's a real rapist, you know, the kind that jumps out from behind a bush in a dirty hoodie. On a popular and serious political programme in the UK, the accuser of a suspected rapist is named, then criticised for not being a good enough victim. You think we don't live in a rape culture? This shit is from one goddamn week.

Rape is a crux issue because the propagating of myths and lies about it is ABSOLUTELY FUCKING EVERYWHERE. For every person tweeting their disgust for all the apologetic rubbish and handwringing WHAT ABOUT THE MENZZZ!! there is another person commenting that 'spousal rape is nonsense' (this was an actual comment on the Owen Jones piece but it appears to mercifully have been removed). And my peoples, I am tired, so very fucking tired of it. There are good things that have come out of this week, like the massive outcry against Assange's speech and Galloway's video, the hashtag #menagainstrape trending on Twitter, and a gathering call for Akin to step down. But I am still unwise enough to read the comments on Op Ed pieces and I fear the worst - that we are nowhere near destroying rape culture. I suspect we have only just begun a very long fight.





* although this comes with the caveat that as Missouri is located firmly under the tight squeeze of the Bible belt, he may well not have had any high school biology lessons. This would be hilarious, if it weren't entirely possible.
** I want to acknowledge here that this is a limiting use of the word gender - I realise I am simplifying. What I mean is that rape is statistically a crime carried out in the vast majority by male-identifying humans against female-identifying humans. Statistics are reductionist and gender is complex, yo. What this doesn't also illustrate is the fact that victims of rape are overwhelmingly 'othered' peoples - sex workers, transgender people, people in jail, children, the physically and/or mentally disabled, gay people and the elderly (NB NOT a comprehensive list by any means, well the fuck done, humanity).