Mind the Gap

You know that feeling of combined horror and fascination? You know, when you really should look away, but you just can’t? If you’d like to indulge it, check out these Abstinence education materials. I think my personal favourite is the “Abstinence Avenger.”

Hat tip Cold in Norway.

If you don’t already know, Nubian from Blac(k)ademic recently received insulting and hurtful comments on her post at Alas, A Blog entitled Gender Does Not Trump Race. Ampersand has collected some of the responses from women of colour bloggers here. I would like to add this post from Nappy as I Want to Be: Reach down and write from your crying place … . I agree with Ampersand that white feminists would do very well to go and read these posts and think hard about what they’re saying.

Maybe this is why it’s so difficult to secure rape convictions:

police treat rape as 2nd class crime.

Does anyone know of any good essays, articles or blog posts on the subject of post-feminism? We have a discussion night this week and we haven’t got much on it.

Today is the day to Blog Against Heteronormativity. So get over to Blac(k)ademic and check out the posts as they come in. My own contribution is here.

This is an issue that has really annoyed me for a while. The minute anybody anywhere mentions the possibility of changing anything that may possibly benefit rape victims and lead to more convictions somebody pipes up with “But what about all those women who will make false allegations?” Poor Men, Ruined lives etc, etc. Having finally thought about the reasons why it annoys me in a way that is almost coherent, I’m going to attempt, in a short post to explain why this argument is a big, time-wasting, energy-sucking fallacy.

I have no doubt that having been falsely accused of rape must be devastating for someone, I don’t really think this fits in with debates over helping rape victims, i.e. women who have actually been raped and traumatized. I shall tell you why I think this same old argument gets wheeled out. Frankly when you bring this argument into a discussion that should be focused on women, you make it about men. Not about raped women, but about the behaviour of scheming conniving little bitches towards poor innocent men. When talking about rape survivors you are dealing with a group of people who are predominantly women, and should be focused on the needs of those women. Obviously, by default there is little room to talk about men in this context except for men as rapists. I can see how that may be threatening to some men, an in an attempt to take the emphasis of men as rapists, and as a handy way to enter the debate, wheel out the old false accusation fallacy.

I don’t believe that the issue of false accusations belongs anywhere near any sensible adult conversation about how to support survivors of rape, and how to improve the rape conviction rates. This is why;

• By using the words false accusations you immediately associate rape survivors with falsehood. By sheer implication you are suggesting that many of these women are probably liars, and as a logical extension of that, trying to screw up some poor innocents guys life by accusing him of being a rapist. The last thing any woman who has been raped needs to hear is rhetoric about false accusations. She needs to be reassured that she will be believed and supported. She needs to believe that it was not her fault. SHE DOES NOT NEED TO SPEND TIME AND ENERGY TRYING TO CONVINCE PEOPLE THAT SHE HAS IN FACT BEEN RAPED IN THE FIRST PLACE.
• Often these arguments seem to imply that if we make it easier to prosecute thousands of women will suddenly jump up and think “He’s pissed me off, I’ll call him a rapist. That’ll teach him.” The processing of rape victims is a long and stressful process that requires a certain amount of courage. Women are not going to put themselves through this lengthy process, which includes internal examination, just to get their kicks. There are not hundreds of women sitting out there just waiting to make false accusations.
• Having been raped still carries with it a stigma. For this reason many women who have been raped do not attempt to prosecute their rapist because they just want to forget about the experience and try and put it behind them. Many women do not want to be in the position of carrying that stigma around. I’m pretty sure that there isn’t a crowd of women out there volunteering for it.
• Having to explain to someone why false accusations aren’t relevant to this discussion takes a lot of time and energy and ultimately diverts the debate from it’s actual perpose.

  False accusations are a completely different issue to those concerning rape survivors and prosecution of actual rapes, and they should be treated as such.

There have been a lot of interesting discussions going on recently about feminism and transgender politics. Via Jay Sennett, I came across this round up of posts on the subject by Koan Bremmer writing at Blogher. (this site is an excellent resource).

If you’re interested in this subject, I’d also recommend Kate Bornstein’s book Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us. It’s really good, clearly witten and transgender theory can throw light on the social construction of gender in ways that are illuminating for feminists too. It’s also very helpful for people like me who, while not transgendered, have a difficult relationship with their gender.

In the interests of discussion, I’m going to post a link to a site called Questioning Transgender which I found at Feh-muh-nist. I’m not going to say any more for the moment (need to think first), but I would be very interested to hear responses to this site from people who identify as transgender or transsexual feminists.

Cross posted at my personal blog.

Lelyons is compiling all the posts for the blog to raise awareness about sexual violence day here.

This post has been written for the Blogathon to raise awareness about sexual violence.

an awesome fact has come to light: appallingly few women can claim that they have not been victims, at one time in their lives, of either attempted or accomplished sexual attacks. Angela Davis

I have never been raped. I have been sexually assaulted and sexually harassed, but this far in my life I have not been raped. Initially, it might seem a little strange, then, that on this day to raise awareness about sexual violence, I’m going to blog about something that hasn’t happened to me.

Many people might find the fact that I have not been raped rather surprising because there have been many occasions in my life when I’ve behaved in ways which our society construes as “asking for it.” For example, about 10 years ago, when I still dated men, I went out with some co-workers and got pretty drunk. There was one man I liked, although I didn’t know him very well. Somehow we ended up back at my place in the early hours of the morning. There was a bit of a kiss and a cuddle. I thought it would be rude to turf him out on the streets at 4am so I said he could stay, but I didn’t want to have sex with him. He was quite drunk too, but we settled down companionably in my bed. The next morning we went for breakfast together.

Why didn’t he rape me? I had done a lot of things which many people still regard as making a woman deserving of rape. I had got drunk; I had gone out with a man I hardly knew; I had taken him home with me; I had invited him into my bedroom; I had “led him on” and then, sin of all sins, I had said “No” to sex with him.

Well there is in fact only one reason why I didn’t get raped that night and it has nothing whatsoever to do with my behaviour.

I didn’t get raped because that man was not a rapist.

Fortunately for me, he was the kind of man who would never force a woman into sexual contact without her express consent. So, whatever I did, I was safe, because I wasn’t with a rapist. Now, there was no way I could possibly have known this at the time and if he had been inclined to force himself upon women sexually, I would have been in real danger because I probably was too drunk to put up a fight. But if he had raped me, it would not have been because of anything I did or did not do; it would have been because he was a rapist.

Still, can you imagine the court case scenario?
Does anyone think I would have stood a chance of getting a conviction?

Looking back over my life, I’m aware of having been in danger of being raped on three occasions. My behaviour has never altered. The only factor that changed in those situations was the presence of a potential or actual rapist, a man I now know to have been inclined to sexually abusive behaviour towards women. But I was lucky. I have been extremely lucky because I haven’t yet encountered a rapist in a situation where he has had the opportunity to rape me. It is perfectly possible that this will happen to me at some point in my life. All women have to live with the awareness of possibly getting raped. At least two of my friends have been raped. If my day comes, I might be able to fight him off, but I might not. One thing I do know: if it ever happens to me, it won’t be because of anything I’ve done.

Women have got to discard this imposed responsibility for being raped. Women get raped for various reasons, not least among them are the following:

a) There are too many rapists on the loose
b) They are getting away with too much rape
c) Our society has its own reasons for refusing to deal with the epidemic in sexual violence

Instead of facing up to the rape crisis, it is easier to argue that women are the problem. The myth propagated is that women are raped because of what they do. It is not, therefore, rapists that are the real problem, it is women: women must stop doing things that make men rape them. In other words, women have to stop getting themselves raped.

Of course women can’t stop men from trying to rape them. And this is all a big red herring anyway, created by a society which has long collaborated with rapists because rape terrorism controls women. Creating a world in which women are constantly terrified of being raped is a society with enormous power over women as a (socially constructed) class. Rape terrorism is also used to keep men in line for different reasons i.e. it is particularly important in policing appropriate masculine gender performance and (hetero)sexuality. But the important point to remember here is that rape is always a weapon of domination used by people with power against people who are depowered and positioned as deserving to be raped.

Many certainly still regard rape as a basically just punishment for uppity women. My mother’s middle-aged friends will make excuses for any rapist who’s victim is not a fully-clothed, sober young virgin dragged into a hedge by a complete stranger at knifepoint in broad daylight. These women, pillars of church and community, frighten me. If I had been raped by my friend that night, they would have said “But she asked him into her room. What did she expect?” They seem to believe all men to be potential rapists given the chance or spurned into action by an uppity woman who therefore deserves to be punished with rape. They know that rape is a bad thing. On some level, they do know that it’s really about power, control and the punishment of women. But they still think women deserve to be raped. Some of them must have been raped and I presume they blame themselves. Lots of women think they deserve to be raped.

Breaking down this false consciousness remains a top feminist priority.

Imagine a world in which no woman ever thought she, or any other woman, deserved to be raped.

Interesting links:
Truth about Rape (UK).
Men Against Sexual Violence (US).
Sexual Assault Awareness Month (US).

Via Known Turf, I came across these photographs of the Prostitutes of La Merced. The pictures and stories are incredible: shocking and devestating, but also surprising, powerful and tender.