Mind the Gap

I blogged before, a few months ago, about how I thought we needed to revise the way we talk about rape. Having become a little more familiar with the subject, and in view of The Sun’s recent alignment with the stop rape campaign , I believe it’s even more urgent than I initially thought.

Back then, my main issue was with how we view the actual act of rape, that it’s more than an act of violence, a theft of a woman’s virtue, as if she had some priceless jewel stuck up her lady bits that gets lost forever once they’ve been entered, that if it’s an illegitimate visitor it’s a theft, or worse, destruction, and that if it’s a legitimate visitor (like a boyfriend or husband), he gets to own it so it’s fine. I still believe what’s wrong with rape isn’t some abstract theft or destruction of virtue, and I think most feminists would agree with me on that. Yet a lot of our reasoning on rape still hinges on that idea of theft and destruction, whether we literally think that women keep a string of pearls, crystal flower, or diamond ring up their bits or not.

This is also one of the main reasons the rape conviction rate is so low: judges and police think women don’t guard their virtue closely enough, hence the whole idea that, unless a woman was being held down by a horde of hairy trolls at the time and beaten into a bloody pulp, she was probably asking for it. And also, some women are such shameless hussies that they like being beaten up during sex anyway. I remember reading some time in the 90s that it was finally possible under Italian law for a woman to be raped even though she was wearing jeans at the time (as the woman would need to assist the rapist in removing them). As a result of this kind of attitude, it’s often necessary for a rape victim to justify absolutely everything, what she was wearing at the time, whether she recalls what her attacker’s cock looks like, and how she generally “likes it”, just to ensure that she wasn’t asking for it. Also, if she wanted to talk to the media to get her story heard, she’d better damn well make sure she’s whiter than snow, preferably white (blonde) and affluent with kids and / or career prospects, pretty but not too pretty, and able to prove she was wearing a chastity belt at the time.

Nothing you haven’t read a million times before on other blogs, I’m sure. The problem is, and I can’t stress the importance of this enough: We’re still using the same language as the oppressors, and waiting for them to effect the changes that will make things better for women. There are a number of power structures that we completely take for granted. For all the talk of bringing down the Patriarchy, we don’t want to diminish their power over us, we want to change their attitudes to suit us. Maybe that’s a mistake.

One thing that bugs me, for instance, when talking about violence against women, is when people say “you shouldn’t hit a woman”. That really bothers me: it’s like saying that women are weak and should be put on a pedestal out of harm’s way, possibly on the mantelpiece or in a picture frame, and never move. It’s the same attitude that implies that women shouldn’t exert themselves too much or think too much: John Harvey Kellogg speak. I think a far better way to put it is, as Ian MacKaye said at a gig in the Fugazi documentary, “You do not beat up people for being women, you do not beat up people for being gay, you do not beat up people.” Far better, and it also highlights the problem: that women are attacked because they’re being punished for being women. In fact, this punishment often continues in the courtroom, if it gets that far. And of course, it highlights that there is a problem with beating people up period, and that the problem doesn’t lie with the women. Otherwise, you will get quite legitimate cries of “Hey, what about men, more of them get beaten up.” Yes, but they don’t get beaten up for being men.

And of course, there is a sense of entitlement that men have, that women tend not to. This is where self-defence classes come in. Although again, the language and the thought behind this is flawed: it tends to be about men being naturally enclined to spring on unsuspecting women and ravish them, and women having to take the responsibility for defending themselves. It would be far better to develop women’s assertiveness and sense of entitlement to walk the streets alone at any time, unmolested. A lot of the language surrounding rape describes the women as helpless victims and the men having absolute physical supremacy. In fact, most women are quite capable of defending themselves, we’re just brought up to believe that we’re not. For instance, accounts of the punk scene in both Shane McGowan’s autobiography and Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life describe women being quite capable of holding their own in a brawl. I’m not saying we should shave our heads and start chucking chairs around, but you know, maybe it would be good to acknowledge that we can.

And part of developing a sense of entitlement is to stop taking power structures like the law or the media for granted. They have a lot of power over us, yes, but they don’t have absolute power, they haven’t always been there, and they won’t always be there. The least we can do is to stop using their language to describe our problems.