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.

Tweety Pie

I was introduced to Twitter earlier this year. I don't mean by that that I was such a Luddite I'd never heard of it before, in fact when the London riots were going on last summer I sat on my Hoxton balcony in the surreally brilliant sunshine and anxiously refreshed #hackneyriots over and over again, just to see if anything was coming my way (I will admit that this reaction was not 100% fearful but had a good measure of excitement thrown in, which is perhaps the topic of another bloggy unpicking). What I mean is that I started using Twitter as a fellow tweeter earlier this year - I'm studying for a Masters and this was one of the course requirements (long story) - and, quite simply, I fell in lurve.

I love Twitter. I love it for simple reasons, such as the constant stream of information, the enforced brevity, the fact that you can 'talk' directly to actual people you recognise and admire, but I also love it for complex reasons. I am an avid Facebook user, and being a total humblebrag cliche, I have a lot of friends on Facebook. They don't all share my sociopolitical views. In an ideal world I suppose I would wade into every single argument that I could wielding my righteous banner of fury and my scathing sword of rhetoric, but let's face it, I think my friend count would plummet faster than a stock market crash. Facebook, essentially, is social downtime - how you'd act in the pub with your mates, swapping drunken stories and baby photos, and remembering that one time at that festival when - oh look, here's a picture of it. Whose round is it?

Twitter is completely different. For a start, it feels much more anonymous in the shouting-into-a-void sense (although if you were using it as a shalabrity I concede it probably has the opposite effect), while at the same time far more globally connected. Most of my FB friends live in the same country I reside in. On Twitter I follow people tweeting from literally* all over the world. So, I love the complexity of that duality - your connections are being made devoid of knowing almost anything about the other side of the interaction, especially if you are not following each other, and yet those connections are being made despite this. Further, they are often being made either when you vehemently agree or violently disagree with the other twitterer. A duality within a duality. I like this kind of Chinese-box stuff, it makes my brain hurt, but in a good way, like the way your muscles hurt after a gym session.

Another thing I love about Twitter is that although it is essentially an extremely basic premise, you can actually use it to do whatever you want it to (yet another duality, I should write this shit down yo). What I mean is, you could be tweeting as an entirely fictional character, as a public persona, on behalf of a company, purely for social interaction, to network, to link or retweet, or, you can use it like me, as a soapbox. Which brings me back to Facebook. Although I am at heart a political beast and like nothing more than a good hearty rant, usually on the subjects of feminism, human rights, social justice and so forth, I have lost count of how many times one of my less politically-minded (or, let's face it, more laid-back) friends has come up to me and chosen argument-victim in the pub and basically told us, affectionately, to pack it in. While I will never pack it in in the pub (cue eyerolls of recognition from those who know me), on Facebook, well, it does seem appropriate to pack it in. There's only so much tub-thumping your FB friends want to hear. Most of them want to go back to drunken stories and baby photos - and you know what? I think that's just fine. I need that downtime too myself.

But on Twitter I can be as loudly and vociferously political as I damn well want. I can tweet my disgust to Todd Akin for his rape-based balderdash or WH Smith for their sexist magazine labelling, cement my solidarity with others fighting the good fight on the same rhetorical battle lines, and engage in thoughtful debate on, dare I say it, a higher intellectual plane than usually occurs on FB. This doesn't mean I think there is no dumbassed bottom-feeding mudslinging on Twitter, because of course there is one bajillion tons of that shit as well, but I can avoid it by choosing my interactions. And that feels, unsurprisingly, hugely empowering (NB I do NOT feel empowered by Facebook - but again this is the topic of another post). Twitter, with its strict use of handles and hashtags, channels political feeling, and works to galvanise people towards shared causes.

I'll give you one example: I mention WH Smith above - they are currently the target of a sustained campaign to get them to change their sexist magazine labelling (this is so tired I shouldn't have to explain it, but you know the deal - mags like Private Eye and National Geographic being put in a "Men's Interests" section, as if owning a vagina precludes one from being interested in either politics or anthropology (whereas as we know it's probably the opposite, AMIRITE)). This hasn't quite succeeded yet but the absolutely bloody brilliant part is that the same campaigns have already worked for Morrisons and Tesco! How fucking brilliant is that? You might call this armchair activism, but given that most actual activism appeals to all but the die-hard few, I'd say this is exactly what we need - this isn't just the mobilisation of the voice of the people, but the voice of the people actually being listened to and acted upon. For fucking once.

So, Twitter feels empowering? That's because it damn well is. And it's especially useful in the fight against patriarchy - of which more anon.




*Note correct usage, motherfuckers.

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).

Sticking my oar in...

...forgive the maritime metaphors, I'm channelling Adrienne Rich.

Having started a couple of blogs in the past - one food-related, one poetry-related, both displacement activities (but then most of what I do in my spare time is a displacement activity of one kind or another), I have been lured back online again to try my hand for a third time (it's the charm, right? Although Waugh warned us all in no uncertain terms about the dangers of charm).

Partly because I think there are some possible gems in the abandoned poetry blog (what Rich might call glitter in fragments and rough drafts) which deserve a home, and partly because recently most of my friends seem to have developed a writerly habit, either online or in print, and to be truthful, I feel a little left behind. I used to write compulsively, almost like a nervous reaction; something would happen and I would write about it. I don't do that so much anymore, in part I suspect because of Facebook and Twitter - not that I am knocking them, I have no ambivalence towards them and no angst about using them; but I think they offer a near-constant means of communicating in textual form: a drip-feed rather than the sudden purge of a paragraph of text. Apologies for the bloody imagery. Hopefully this blog might resurrect not my ambitions but my compulsions, and my long-neglected relationship with the written word.

So, with a little hesitation, this is me diving into the wreck again, having read the book of myths and loaded the camera - forewarned and forearmed. Rich was a wise woman indeed.