I am getting sick and tired of this, coupled with rage at the vilifying and demonising of rape victims/survivors. There isn’t a day goes by when there’s criticism and the spotlighting of rape and sexual assault that purposely undermines and denigrates the seriousness of the offences. Simply women lie and that some forms of rape aint that bad.
What enrages me even more is the way people who consider themselves left-wing have a tendency to leave their brain somewhere that leads them to spew a lot of misogyny. Though with some it is not a matter of unthinking responses but more, I daresay, capitulating to the sexist myths or to be more precise, when one of the poster-boys of progressive politics, is accused of sexual offences then it seems the collective response is to believe they have been set-up, nothing more than a CIA honeytrap where the women are just pawns making up their stories of sexual violence to smear the good name of this worthy champion of truth, justice and the wikileaks way. Instead of waiting for the evidence to be tested in court the women are named and shamed, reduced to honeytrap accusations, vilified, smeared and denigrated. Left high and dry while various people of left persuasion continue to vocalise the innocence of Assange. I prefer to wait for the court case myself……
And now we have Dominique Strauss-Kahn, according to the media, nothing more than a “seducer” of women. So the logic runs it’s not rape or attempted rape but seduction and that the accuser can’t tell the difference. The woman has been named and shamed, vilified and demonised by the French and American Press. DSK is simply “incapable” of carrying out this kind of attack. Why? Powerful seductive so-called charming men like DSK can’t carry out attempted rape? Well, that the spin the media is peddling along with the woman being part of a honeytrap…. questions about her stability, appearance, looks and so on. Let’s trash the accuser. Let’s stick her under the microscope and dissect everything about her life, let’s hang her out to dry, scrutinise and let’s destroy everything including her reputation…..‘cos women lie and powerful men don’t commit these sort of crimes, do they? Well, that’s the line and who cares about the women…..
The “left” in France are split over DSK, the so-called socialist who likes wealth with his connections to the IMF. Excuse after excuse is found to defend this close friend of capitalism. But I say wait for the court case though I have been accused by some on the “left” as having too much faith in the bourgeois courts… I say, comrades, what else have we got! It is not the men in these cases who are experiencing injustices it is the women as they are being constantly denigrated and dismissed as fakers and liars.
As Suzanne Moore powerfully writes: “A woman’s life has been ruined, whatever happens. Yet it is the great lover in chains the French public is being encouraged to sympathise with.And, so far, it’s working”.
Receiving justice in this country is an uphill, in France 10% of 75,000 rape victims each year go to the police. I don’t know how many reach court and successfully prosecuted as we have live in a patriarchal capitalist world very few possibly. Justice has a tendency to be stacked against victims of rape and sexual assault. Power and control doesn’t enter the bourgeois equation of sexual violence neither does race, sex and class. The problem with the left is that it builds up these poster boys and can’t quite believe they could do bad things.
It is more grist to the victim blaming mill when you get police telling women to avoid dressing like sluts, Ken Clarke pretty much proposing a hierarchy of rape i.e. some worst than others and now this from a reactionary “straight talking” MEP of a fool on date rape:
In the second case the victim surely shares a part of the responsibility, if only for establishing reasonable expectations in her boyfriend’s mind.
So a woman should know better when it is her partner or someone a woman trusts. She is putting herself in the situation and some blame should be attached to her behaviour. I so seethe with anger. And there’s this too:
Imagine that a woman voluntarily goes to her boyfriend’s apartment, voluntarily goes into the bedroom, voluntarily undresses and gets into bed, perhaps anticipating sex, or naïvely expecting merely a cuddle. But at the last minute she gets cold feet and says “Stop!”. The young man, in the heat of the moment, is unable to restrain himself and carries on.
Furthermore
I think that most right-thinking people would expect a much lighter sentence in the second case. Rape is always wrong, but not always equally culpable.
Firstly, unable to “restrain himself”… what is this man, a dog on heat…? Reducing men to their biology negates any responsibility and accountability. Yet a political choice has been made by ignoring the response of the woman demonstrating overwhelming power and control over the situation…because that’s what it’s fundamentally about. Rape is rape whoever is committing it. Does this straight talking MEP want to bring back spousal rape immunity which only disappeared from the statute books in 1991?
Secondly, I know I shouldn’t get angry at this MEP as I shouldn’t waste my energy but it’s a further attack on justice for women who have experienced sexual violence. Thinking about this my own personal experience crept to the forefront. You can apply the scenario that the straight talking MEP to my own traumatic experience as a teenager. I trusted my boyfriend, I voluntarily went into his bedroom, undressed and got into bed…. I didn’t want sex but he held me down and attempted to rape me, I screamed, “No”! “Stop”! “Stop”! “STOP”! But to no avail, I remember thinking maybe I wasn’t shouting “no” out loud and only in my head… but I was screaming and shouting… he didn’t stop. Trust in men after that relationship was in tatters, my identity was shattered and even though it happened well over 20 years ago I still live with the emotional wounds, wounds have healed but mentally the memories are still tucked away even if I believe I have come to terms with this. I internalised blame believing it was my own fault (and many women do this) along with could have I done more to stop it. At that precise time it never occurred to me that he was to blame and that I couldn’t formulate the word “rape” inside my head cos, he was my boyfriend, surely it wasn’t rape? But it was and it took some years to come admit the horrific truth. Society already blames women and I in turn carried on that blame by blaming myself… and that was hard to shake.
The attempts to put forward a hierarchy of rape would mean rape by someone you know wouldn’t be that bad or not as worse as stranger rape. I mean, you choose to be in that situation, don’cha! Rape is rape whatever the situation but arguing divide and rule tactics will create a serious/not so serious rape that will continue to denigrate and demolish justice for rape victims and survivors of rape a like.
Rape is rape. No means no!
Interesting articles written by French feminists (in French)
FMI, LAMENTABLE SYMBOLE D’UN SYSTÈME CAPITALISTE ET PATRIARCAL (CADTM.ORG)
SOLIDAIRES DES FEMMES VICTIMES DE VIOLENCES, TOUJOURS!
Yes Yes YES!! You wrote what I have been thinking here and I will repost to my blog too. I am having to revisit my own experience of rape as a transexual man who was raped in his teens and 25 years later went and reported a man who had raped me at 15. I take massive issue with those people who reduce rape being something that (a) only men are capable of and (b) that it can be ‘explained away’ by this concept that men are somehow incapable of escaping their ‘biological urges’ aka testosterone. Rape, as any survivor will tell you, is all about power and control and nothing to do with rampant wild sexual love. No means no – vocally, non-verbally, however it is expressed, and if a person is not capable of saying yes because of age, ability or intoxication, then that counts as a no automatically.
I don’t know what you think about the reduced sentencing for early guilty pleas from rapists. I have thought about this and for me personally I would have most liked my rapist to have admitted and taken responsibility for his offence when he was interviewed under caution. He didn’t, he denied, he then made excuses etc. He was never charged in the end as the CPS didn’t deem there to be sufficient evidence to go to trial. I have imagined what a more restorative justice would feel like to me and I do think that if an offender takes responsibility at an early stage for their offence it can greatly help victims survive the ordeal of going to court. Of course sentencing also MUST include access to therapeutic support for both victims/survivors and offenders.
Thanks for posting!
Many many thanks Sam x
When it comes to rape views are always wedded in some kind of feudal understanding. It angers me so much when rape survivors are accused of all sorts of things. At the end of the day it is about justice. It is about power and control. It is about power relationships.
Btw: hope you don’t mind asking you but when you reported the man, how did you feel? Did you feel like you had taken charge of something?
The thing what constantly sticks in my head is that he (violent bastard in my life) got away with it, no responsibility or accountability just escaped to another part of the country. The time he was confronted for his actions was over domestic violence as I never mentioned the sexual violence as I just couldn’t because I still felt ashamed was when he was forced to resign from the trot group we were both in….not expelled. How trot/left groups deal with these issues is another post entirely. But I also felt cheated of justice and time has ticked on. I was for some years unable to admit to rape possibly because I was in denial, it was easier that way.
On sentencing…. I am unsure. Yes, of course when an offender admits guilt it means no trial. But beyond that I have given it little thought. I should do.
Thanks again comrade
If this is true (and it is a Murdoch paper – but if it is true) – words for once fail me.
I’ve been trying to write something on this subject for the last six months, since the Assange coverage. I have failed. I find the whole subject so fucking painful and emotive. And of course I admire rational, objective, dispassionate discussion. I censor myself when I don’t live up to that standard and end up feeling silenced. So I admire your courage here.
If I ever write that piece, I think I want to say that we will never solve this with legal remedies. There is a reason why conviction rates are so low, beyond the sexism and misogyny of police and judicial system, which has to do with the nature of the crime. It will always be very difficult to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that one person’s version of events is true in the face of an opposing account – given that sex can also be consensual and these are crimes usually without witnesses, usually without corroborating evidence. Rapists know this, of course, and actively use an MO that reduces their risk of prosecution/conviction. Upsetting but very interesting discussion of some of these issues here -> http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/
I’m not quite sure where that realization (that most rape is, perhaps inherently, ‘unprosecutable’ in any satisfactory way) leaves me other than depressed and angry. But I’m pretty sure that there are no reasonable changes that could be made to the law that would increase conviction rates. Reversal of the burden of proof is a step too far in my view, even if false accusations are exceptionally rare and no higher than for other serious crimes. Clarke’s proposal is playing around the edges. How many rapists who currently plead not guilty would admit their guilt in return for a reduced sentence, given that a not guilty plea rarely results in conviction?