logansrogue (
logansrogue) wrote2010-01-23 02:34 pm
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Rape Apology and Rape Culture - Even *you* can contribute to Victim Blaming!
AN: Please keep in mind that this entire angry rant is using the general "you", not the specific "you". Oh for days when we had a choice between "You" and "Thou".
So! You're progressive! You're forward-thinking, forward-acting, and you care about the little people. Bravo!
But don't get too comfortable. Nobody's perfect - that's what it is to be human! In your striving to be compassionate, to be intellectual and logical, however, be careful not to pad your conscience with the bumper zone of being an apologist. Whether that be in charges of racism, sexism, misogyny or what the hell ever.
This Post and subsequent thread at Jezebel illustrates just that.
People seem to be having a really hard time parsing the fact that rapists are Nice People Too. They care for their grandmothers, they look after their babies, they help you out when you're down! They are people's brothers, husbands, best friends, relatives. It really hurts when you find out that someone you care about or have been social with is actually a predator. It sucks, but believe me when I tell you, you are doing nobody any favours by dismissing their crimes as mistakes, or as one-time affairs.
Let me explain it as simply as I can.
Rape happens because one person thinks they're entitled to another person's body. Rape happens because the perpetrator has huge fucking psychological problems and can't deal with life on their own. So to compensate for that, they scrabble for control by taking control of other people's bodies. This is a learnt behaviour that is integral to who they are as a person. Many values and behaviours branch from this deep belief of entitlement.
A rapist is someone who thinks their mental well-being is more important than YOUR life and happiness. Than your safety, your security, your mental well-being.
They are selfish bastards that will put themselves above other people.
Not all people, of course. Not usually men, not particular women or children. No, not everyone. And there-in lies the fucking problem.
"He's never hurt me," people think. "It would be rude not to talk to them." "One act doesn't mean you still can't be a good person!" "But he was so nice to me all those years!"
By even airing this stuff as a default, by bringing this up every time a rapist is discussed, it is both bringing the victim into doubt and minimizing the crime. This happens enough in our culture. This shit isn't said in a vacuum, and every time someone assumes a rapist is a great guy, they're ignoring the victim, belittling their pain and their right to justice.
What about the victims? Aren't they usually great people too? Mothers and wives and daughters and sisters and cousins. I'm sure some of them like dancing, or helping rescue puppies and kittens. They might even like to go swimming or give to charity or help at the local homeless shelter.
Then one day some buttwipe decides that their own power and satisfaction is more important than that victim's selfhood.
Hundreds of thousands of people make excuses for him. And then the culture thinks it's okay. The victim is silenced. The predator is given voice and priority.
Don't be an apologist. What kind of person the rapist is is never, ever the issue. It doesn't matter. What matters is that someone is hurt and that we must stop people being hurt.
~~*~~
A/N2: Please understand that I navigated my own great anger, hurt and fury at the world to write this post. Use some sensitivity if you're going to disagree with me, but really - I rather you just didn't bring it up if you do.
So! You're progressive! You're forward-thinking, forward-acting, and you care about the little people. Bravo!
But don't get too comfortable. Nobody's perfect - that's what it is to be human! In your striving to be compassionate, to be intellectual and logical, however, be careful not to pad your conscience with the bumper zone of being an apologist. Whether that be in charges of racism, sexism, misogyny or what the hell ever.
This Post and subsequent thread at Jezebel illustrates just that.
People seem to be having a really hard time parsing the fact that rapists are Nice People Too. They care for their grandmothers, they look after their babies, they help you out when you're down! They are people's brothers, husbands, best friends, relatives. It really hurts when you find out that someone you care about or have been social with is actually a predator. It sucks, but believe me when I tell you, you are doing nobody any favours by dismissing their crimes as mistakes, or as one-time affairs.
Let me explain it as simply as I can.
Rape happens because one person thinks they're entitled to another person's body. Rape happens because the perpetrator has huge fucking psychological problems and can't deal with life on their own. So to compensate for that, they scrabble for control by taking control of other people's bodies. This is a learnt behaviour that is integral to who they are as a person. Many values and behaviours branch from this deep belief of entitlement.
A rapist is someone who thinks their mental well-being is more important than YOUR life and happiness. Than your safety, your security, your mental well-being.
They are selfish bastards that will put themselves above other people.
Not all people, of course. Not usually men, not particular women or children. No, not everyone. And there-in lies the fucking problem.
"He's never hurt me," people think. "It would be rude not to talk to them." "One act doesn't mean you still can't be a good person!" "But he was so nice to me all those years!"
By even airing this stuff as a default, by bringing this up every time a rapist is discussed, it is both bringing the victim into doubt and minimizing the crime. This happens enough in our culture. This shit isn't said in a vacuum, and every time someone assumes a rapist is a great guy, they're ignoring the victim, belittling their pain and their right to justice.
What about the victims? Aren't they usually great people too? Mothers and wives and daughters and sisters and cousins. I'm sure some of them like dancing, or helping rescue puppies and kittens. They might even like to go swimming or give to charity or help at the local homeless shelter.
Then one day some buttwipe decides that their own power and satisfaction is more important than that victim's selfhood.
Hundreds of thousands of people make excuses for him. And then the culture thinks it's okay. The victim is silenced. The predator is given voice and priority.
Don't be an apologist. What kind of person the rapist is is never, ever the issue. It doesn't matter. What matters is that someone is hurt and that we must stop people being hurt.
~~*~~
A/N2: Please understand that I navigated my own great anger, hurt and fury at the world to write this post. Use some sensitivity if you're going to disagree with me, but really - I rather you just didn't bring it up if you do.
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Our culture of Silence disgusts me, and I think it is WRONG to apologise for any rapist, no matter how 'nice' they can be. No matter how many different facets to their personality. If one of those facets is 'I raped someone,' they go into my 'pile of useless piece of shit human beings.'
And if one of my friends continues to apologise for rapists, despite knowing this stuff, they also go into that pile too, because I'm just a bitch that way.
As it turns out, there are a lot of useless piece of shit human beings out there.
(Sorry for swearing, but I totally agree with you.)
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You are absolutely right.
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IMO Rape is something you can never ever excuse someone for - it isn't something to be easily brushed away, to be forgotten.
It says a lot about how effed up society is when we're excusing - even forgiving - the rapist. :/
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An interesting question is whether a rapist can ever redeem him/herself? Especially in case of Polanski, one wonders this. We're told he's married, got children but all that is not redeeming, not in the slightes.
If somebody hurts someone else they have to fulfill a process of accepting their errors, being truely sorry and to face consequences none of this happened here.
Contrary his wife shows with this kind of comments they still haven't accepted that he hurt that girl, took in a way so much quality life from her...it is still all about him, not about that little girl.
But it is easier to pretend all this never happened, to get on with life without looking back on first glance...however as difficult as it seems it is if one really thinks about it easier to face consequences, be truthfully what anybody did directly rather than to have a whole life full of demons.
Somebody like that as much as they like to pretend otherwise will never become truly happy again, lies eat one away...and that is in a way consequences of their crime as well. We may not see it but that's in a way justice. That's probably karma.
I hope for you, despite everything you find happiness and thanks for this thought-provoking entries of yours.
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Y'know I've had some say to me that *I* am being unresonable and not 'being nice' because I don't want to associate with That Man. Those people need to read this post.
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My own experience with an attempted rapist
Now, *up until that point* the perpetrator actually did seem a nice guy, a vocally lefty progressive one, and a decent enough one, with no bad reputation at all. He was very drunk at the time and we had never seen him act at all this way before, and he didn't create the situation (but was trying to make it continue after she had clearly said no). And afterwards, he was incredibly remorseful, and immediately voluntarily sought out counselling. I think his regret was sincere, and that he really did understand what he had done and how wrong it was, and was doing what he could to ensure it would never happen again.
But you know what? I never saw him again, not once, because it was made very clear that, no matter how nice and progressive he had seemed before that point, and no matter how sincere his regret, no one of his former friends considered that behaviour acceptable ever, and we did not think he should ever be in his prospective victims presence ever again (unless at her explicit request), and we no longer wished to socialise with him ever. I think that is a *minimum* level of response.
I believe that some people who commit sexual violence can undergo genuine remorse, and can change for the better (though many do not). I believe in compassion for all, and that includes perpetrator as well as victim . But I think compassion for the victim is far more important, and I also believe that the most compassionate caring thing you can do for the perpetrator is make them realise just how fucked up what they have done is, and that they need professional help to stop them ever doing it again, for the sake of themselves, everyone they care about, and the safety of people in the future. No matter how reasonable (or nice, or talented) they seem at other times, excusing their actions, or apologising for them, is just fucking wrong. If people who love them want to try to help them on that journey of remorse and change, want to be with them when as they try to deal with the darkness inside, fine. But that is very different to downplaying it, rationalising it, pretending it wasn't a big deal. Fuck that.
That said, I get the point made in the Jezebel article, that it is hard to hate Seigner for rationalising her husbands crime. Judge her, yes, but not hate her.
Re: My own experience with an attempted rapist
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No surprises I agree completely, I'd guess. :)
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Correction:
Re: Correction:
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You are really great for writing this post.
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It seems like sometimes the more educated and liberal people are, the more toxic they become. I'm liberal and educated, so...
Like my mother has a Ph.D. She did her dissertation on women's body issues and the collective unconscious/feminine divine. Not that that stopped her own massive body image issues OR taking that shit out on me.
Anyways, when I was raped and I reported it she screamed at me for "creating more drama" and asked "what were you doing with him in the first place."
Later, she totally invalidated me and swore up and down she never said that and never would have said that - though she was and still is emotionally abusive in general and always treated me as some psychology experiment instead of a child, up to and including smoking pot with me when I was 14 (thought it was cool at the time. Now I have an 11-year-old and I'm like what the fuck.)
And she's so educated and so supposedly feminist it makes me nauseated to hear her talk about women's rights anymore. It probably triggers me more than rape talk because I know what a hypocrite she is and that when I needed her the most, she told me to fuck off.
Not the first time, btw. When I got pregnant at 18 and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she sent me to live in a homeless shelter but that's another story, just using it to illustrate what a shitty person she is.
/rant
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He clears his name, while she gets all the blame!
If a woman raped a man, would the verdict still be the same?
Although the problem is that in that case the verdict probably would be the same because the victim in that case would have been assumed to have been wanting. -_-' Rape apologia seems to take whatever side to excuse it, whether it be "He's just a man, he couldn't help himself" or "She wanted it, didn't she?"
I even read once in the paper about an especially abhorrent case (WARNING: When I say abhorrent, I mean it!):
Highlight to read.
A woman had been recommended to a doctor to get a subscription for (I think it was some sort of mental problem that required medication) and he had essentially given her an addictive rape drug. And then raped her in his office. And due to addiction, she found herself going back to him just so she could get the medicine and thus get raped again. When the case did get to court, he was freed. Why? Because her returning to the doctor (repeatedly) proved that she really wanted it.
I honestly think it's easier for me to write this without going into a blind rage because it was months ago that I read it, so the effect isn't nearly as strong as it was when I first read about it.