I, like the majority of North Americans with televisions, watched the Academy Awards on Sunday night. There had been some hints in the red carpet coverage that Neil Patrick Harris might be doing something during the opening, and I was excited to see him. The NPH came out in a sparkly, pin striped tux jacket, with dancing girls, on a Follies-like stage, and began to sing. Within about ten seconds, however, the smile was wiped from my face.
NPH sang a line about inmates in prison dropping the soap in the shower because "no one wants to do it alone" in reference to the show having two hosts. GET IT HAHAHAHA RAPE JOKES. Fuck.
Facebook hosts dozens of pro-rape groups with rape jokes in the title, referring to rape as "surprise sex" and other, similarly rapey ideas. I, myself, have laughed at internet memes about PyramidHead from Silent Hill 2 in the past. Now that shit makes me queasy. Family Guy makes about a rape joke per episode (when they're being particularly restrained). Rape jokes are pervasive in our society, and a big part of what I'm talking about when I talk about rape culture.
Yes Means Yes! has a great post about rape culture, and how boys are inculcated into the belief that women and women's bodies are a resouce to which they have a right to access at any time. Think about the way you've seen middle school boys and girls interact with one another. I'm not so far out of middle school that I don't remember being there.
Yes Means Yes! quotes passages from Dr. C.J. Pascoe's book Dude, You're A Fag, which concerns middle school boys and how they treat their female peers. SPOILER ALERT: how they treat them is with disdain and mostly sexual harassment. The boys grab, pull, push, talk about and USE the girls' bodies in painful and humiliating ways and most of the girls go along with the behaviour because....Because WHY exactly?
Because it's what we're used to. Because adults don't step in and stop it. Because it happens so often and people don't tell us it's wrong, or that we have a right to be treated in any other way.
When I was in middle school, I was also in Army Cadets. I dare you to find an environment where you will find more of this kind of behaviour. A cadet corps is a very social environment, and attending cadets weekly from the time I was 12 until I was 17 shaped how I interact socially even now. I remember several incidents where I was at the center of this kind of harassment, and I remember only speaking up once. The one time that I spoke out on my own behalf, it was to a guy a good two years younger than me, who had grabbed onto my hair and pulled it so hard that my head was wrenched back. When I yelped and told him to stop, that that hurt, he responded with surprise that I would have interrupted the "play" over something so minor. It occurs to me now that the times that I was harassed by older NCO's, I remained silent. Because that's how you're taught to do things in cadets. You don't look adults in the eye, you speak when you're spoken to, you do what you're told by the senior cadets.
I apparently absorbed that that included behaviours like having my inner thigh squeezed until it bruised, being asked how I give head, and standing in a crowd in public with a hand between my legs from behind. The first two happened on a bus during a kind of field trip, and the last at an actual cadet event, while in uniform. These three most memorable incidents happened between the ages of 12 and 14 and the guys involved would have been between one and three years older than me in each account. And I know that I wasn't the only female cadet to allow that kind of shit to happen to myself. It just didn't seem like a big deal at the time, really. It didn't seem like sexual harassment. I'm sure it didn't seem like that to the boys who did it, either.
We are taught as kids that we have the right to tell people not to touch our genitals in ways we don't like. I don't remember being told explicitly that the whole of my body is MINE and that no one has the right to touch it in ANY WAY that I don't ask for and like. So, being raised in the time of STRANGER DANGER, I never really considered an unwanted touch from acquaintances or even friends to be something I had the right to say "no" to. I made up excuses about why I hate having my stomach touched when I saw that people reacted with "why" instead of "OK, sorry". I just fucking hate it, so don't do it? Why is that not enough?
It may not seem like it on the surface, but this attitude that women do not have ownership over their own bodies and do not deserve to be able to dictate how, when and by whom they are touched, is a big part of what leads to rape against women being so widespread and so accepted in our culture. There are too many terms that make rape not rape. "Grey rape", "date rape", "rape by engraved invitation" (fuck you, Ayn Rand). And then there's "rape rape", for when rape really IS rape. Apparently there are fifty kinds of ways that you can be raped without "really" being raped. This is rape apology. The rapes in novels and films like "Gone With the Wind", "300", and pretty much nearly every romance novel EVER are RAPE RAPE. It's ALL rape rape. Anytime that sex is coerced or forced, by drugs or violence or alcohol or WORDS, that is rape. Full stop.
Every time you tell a woman that she needs to be more safe, that she should take better care of her drink at a bar, that she shouldn't wear that short skirt or that low cut blouse to the club, you are telling her that she is responsible for a rapist's actions. You are victim blaming. I even think the phrase victim-blaming is shit. It STILL centers the action around the victim and removes the rapist from the equation. Understand, I'm not saying I'm sick of talking about rape victims. I think we NEED to talk about rape victims. And I think rape victims, where they can, should talk about themselves. But I think that so much is happening in our society that allows rapists to remain faceless, and hidden.
Lisak and Miller's research on self-reporting repeat acquaintance rapists is starting to gain some momentum in the 'nets. Thank dog for that. Maybe this will lead to more people talking about the men (specifically, in this study) who rape, rather than leaving all the responsibility at the feet of the women struggling to deal with the aftermath of being raped.
So, you know, quit it with the fucking rape jokes. I don't say this about too many things, but it's serious fucking business and every single time anyone makes a joke, it undermines the work that people are doing to make rape itself unacceptable.
Gosh. There's a lot going on here, and a lot I want to comment on. I don't know if I can write enough to do it justice without my words being mistaken. To put it plainly, there are several points on here that I take issue with, but instead of disecting every little situation I'll take a different route.
ReplyDeleteI've been doing lots of research on psychopathic personalities as of late. I find them both fascinating and horrible because, translating into my own spiritual definitions, these are people who have been born without souls. (Speaking from a scientific point of view, theoretically they've evolved into a sort of human parasite. They prey on the trustworthiness and empathy of those who are able to feel that.) While not all violent offenders are defined as being psychopaths, comparing the Lisak and Miller study to the definition of being one, the similarities in behaviour are striking. Without more research and information we can only conclude that sometimes rapists are born out of nature, and other times nurture and the rape culture they've been raised in. It does make me wonder though if more often than not these acts are commited by those undetected psychopaths that aren't overtly violent. I have a link somewhere that quotes this figure, but about 1 in 25 people land somewhere on this spectrum of psychopathy.
There's a fine line between victim blaming and good, solid advice because when you're dealing with a personality type that cannot feel the pain of others, then it's damn unlikely that making rape jokes taboo or threatening them with punishment will work to stop this behaviour. Should I have to watch my drink at a bar? In a perfect world, no. But will I, just in case a predator spots me as his prey? You're damn right I will.
It sure sounds like cadets was rampant with this behaviour, which doesn't surprise me considering that psychopaths are attracted to programs that give them power over others. Maybe I'm too narrow minded in saying that a rapist is always a form of psychopath. Call me old fashioned, but I like to think that there's enough morality in most people to stop them from commiting something that is so wrong, like rape.
I'm not really able to speak to what percentage of psychopaths or sociopaths are rapists or vice versa. I'm also not here to tell women not to do what they can to keep themselves safe.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm saying (and what a lot of other people are saying) is that there is an institutionalised attitude in pretty much every society that makes it possible and easy for men who are going to exercise their assumed right to access a woman's body via rape or sexual assault/harassment, to do so and to get away with it.
If you read the Lisak Miller study, you'll find that these men are willing to report that they've coerced or forced women, usually friends and aqcuaintances, into sex. They never say that they have committed rape. But when you define rape for them without using the "r-word", they admit that they've done it. The fact that it's self-reported makes me think that they don't feel they've done anything wrong. That speaks again to the idea that they have simply used a resource (women) in a way that is acceptable.
And again, when it comes to what I said about women and their safety, I'm not saying we shouldn't encourage people to be safe. I'm saying that in spending all our time telling women how to avoid being raped, maybe at least equal time should be spent telling men not to rape. "No means no" by itself isn't working.
Also, I don't think the majority of people who make rape jokes are psychopathic personalities at all. I think they're mostly juvenile people who, when they make these jokes, don't take into consideration what exactly they are poking fun at. Notice that there are few popular rape-victim jokes, but plenty of jokes about being a rapist. That's a fucked up attitude towards rape and the commission of rape. It's unspeakable to be a victim of rape, but it's funny to be a rapist.
Oh no no, I didn't mean that people who make jokes are psychopaths - though malinformed little sh*ts maybe - I meant all of those people who admitted to coercing women into sex, r-word or no. Psychopaths aren't only deranged serial offenders you hear about on the news; that's a small percentage.
ReplyDeleteI suppose what I was getting at is for the number of rapists who are also of a psychopathic persuasion (and I believe it's very possible that the numbers of each match up more than is currently accounted for), telling them "no means no" simply isn't going to work. Remember my "Snake in a Suit" entry? That's the sort of person I'm getting at. A psychopath won't be deterred by the prospect of punishment or by tugging at his heartstrings. Essentially he has none to tug at.
Maybe I'm being totally naive here, but I just can't wrap my head around how a man capable of empathy can commit such a crime. Sure, mistakes and lapses in judgement happen. Crimes of passion can lead to anything, really. But to have a conscience nagging at the back of your mind, to be still able to do something so hurtful? It doesn't add up.
I don't know, what do you think? Has society really snuck in such an attitude of disdain for women's rights that men can violate her bodily rights without guilt, if he's capable of feeling empathy for her?
The thing that bothers me is that I think that otherwise right thinking men COULD commit sexual assault because they are literally groomed to understand that instead of waiting for an invitation, they act first and wait for a "no". They get a woman drunk so she cannot say no. Or they hear no, so they keep asking or they keep touching with the assumption that the woman will give up and give in. Because they have the right to your body, so you will eventually assent to that right.
ReplyDeleteThink of all these shows and books that teach men how to convince and finagle women into having sex with them through lies and acting. If you read that article from Yes Means Yes! you'll see these kinds of behaviours of entitlement starting early. The incidents I described were just that. Entitlement in action. These young men couldn't imagine a world where I had a right to my own body, they didn't wait for an invitation. These men aren't psychopaths (OK, one of them probably is, but the other three are just guys).
I still can't make any kind of general statements about the percentage of psychopaths who commit rape or non-psychopaths who commit rape, but I do believe that the problem is that ALL of the pressure is placed on the victims of rape, and the majority of these repeat acquaintance rapists as described in the Lisak Miller study do not believe that what they've done is rape or that what they've done is wrong.