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toujours_nigel) wrote2015-06-07 06:17 am
toujours_nigel) wrote2015-06-07 06:17 am
Entry tags:
zombies
I wrote about this a little on Facebook, but it's hard to get into it there for a variety of reasons. So anyway. What is it about rape that makes it worse than physical assault of comparable brutality?
Full disclosure. I have experienced only one of these things. My parents whacked me as a kid on rare occasions, but never more than an open-handed slap that I now realise must have been pulled, or a tug on a ponytail, never anything that would qualify as assault or child abuse. On the other hand, when I was seven a distant cousin raped me, and later I have been assaulted by strangers, twice amounting to more than a passing grope. So reading on please keep in mind that I have no lived experience of much of this.
Right. So. Is it innately worse to be raped than beaten, no matter how severe the beating? Do people say, after a beating, that the person subjected to it (a) must have somehow invited it? (b) would be better off dead? Not in my limited experience, which admittedly encompasses rather a lot more sexual than non-sexual assault (both lived and heard), but perhaps.
Domestic violence is often excused on the same lines as sexual assault, but of course in my country at least marital rape isn't thought of as rape, and till quite recently women had to prove cruelty in addition to infidelity in order to gain a divorce, and last year a friend of mine obtaining mutual sep. had to hear in court that she was a whore and was then scolded by the judge and her lawyer for being over-sensitive.
Like marriage, slavery is dicey. Slaves of course have no rights, any more than married women have the right to deny their husbands carnal use of their body (in India and I'm sure elsewhere), and I have often wondered what a body slave does, exactly. It's a little futile wondering whether it's more degrading being your master's bedslave or cleaning out his piss-pot. Personal preferences, of course, but you might very likely be forced into both. Interestingly, though, accd. to the Arthasastra, female debt-peons and temporary slaves at least could not be forced to attend their master in the bath, and David Graeber in Debt reports that the Irish rather feared their daughters being reduced to washerwomen than about them being sexually forced. Cultures that care less about the virginity of their women, and more generally about the rights of men to the bodies of women, tend not to care about rape in quite the same way, might even (though I can't say) think about it as an assault in more physical terms. The rape of adult men in heteronormative societies is, of course, framed as a delightful experience if committed by women, and some strange proof of effeminacy when committed by men. I can't think off-hand of any older society that extends the possibility of honourable, non-constrained same-sex experiences to free, adult, men, but it would be interesting also to know what any such thought of rape as committed upon men.
But having said these things, then, onto that ideal rape of modern society: committed by strangers and preferably including violence and proof of struggle. What makes it worse than a physical assault of comparable brutality? Sexual assault is often compounded by other physical violence (object penetration, multiple penetration, violence to other parts of the body considered sexually arousing, etc), and the genitalia are a tender spot, but it would hurt as much to have one's legs broken, or head bashed in, or to be kicked about. Or all of these together. Or to be electrocuted or have one's nails ripped off or eyes gouged out or bits of one cut away.
We don't wish these people dead, though, or not often. Unless they are marginalised, Otherised, criminalised by our societies, we don't believe they deserved it, or were asking for it.
Maybe it has something to do with women being the world' largest minority. Maybe it has to do with women still being more-or-less property, socially if not legally, and men defining their own worth by rights to the bodies of women, within and outside marital relations. Honour, that beautifully cruel concept, measurable in women. Sex with a woman is an assertion of one's own right, or a violation of someone else's, so that for a seduction the lover must recompense the father/husband, and so that a woman who exposes her hand might have it cut off lest it tempt righteous men. So that a woman who has been raped is an animate bit of property who has strayed her bounds and ought have known better and ought better have died.
When I was young, my aunt, not knowing about me once very seriously informed me that I didn't know this but if I were raped I would wish rather to have died than left alive. More recently she lamented that rapists these days didn't even leave their victims alive to start over. Everywhere the same story: either that one ought have died, or that one must being anew. A forced little death, or worse than death, wine turned vinegar masquerading as wine. A lamed horse shot, or relearning to race in an inspirational story.
People's voices drop, turn soft and solicitous when I tell them I was raped, even if I'm being casual over it, even if I'm being a mean asshole and using the story to core rhetorical points. I've been raped, and I passed out from how it hurt, and I was seven, and afterwards I sat around and spoke to him some more. And then I went home and did my homework and coloured and chased puppies like an idiot and calves like someone with no sense whatsoever. Because here's the thing. My life didn't end. And it didn't start over. There was no cheesy montage. For a few years I reacted badly to being embraced from behind, but that was from a different assault. I was seven and introverted and a fairly angry kid, and I stayed that way.
I doubt that would have been the case if people knew, if I'd told my mum. I'm pretty sure I'd have been believed, so it's not that. But it would have been "ah, that's why!" for the rest of my life, the way it is sometimes when I tell people that I'm a lesbian and that I was raped. So few people believe it isn't cause-and-effect. So goddamned many treat me like an inexplicable zombie, wandering around eighteen odd years after fate worse than death enveloped me.
It hurt, mind. It hurt and I was unnerved and scared and more than a bit confused. But if a fifteen-year-old boy had taken me to his room and inexplicably thrashed me, I'd have been all the same things. So what is it that is different, that I cannot ascribe to heteronormative patriarchy, and why is it that violence against women, or even villainy on part of fictional characters, is so often codified into rape?
ETA: Using my 'kanai' icon because rewatching the B.R. Chopra Mahabharat drives in the fact that for a text extremely open about violence, and an ability to provide human-and-divine (so that the divine is mostly ignorable) motivation for most actions, it skirts like hell around the question of Draupadi being disrobed and/or assaulted even while talking a *lot* about family honour in exactly that context, and avoids it entirely through divine intervention with yards and yards of sari.
Full disclosure. I have experienced only one of these things. My parents whacked me as a kid on rare occasions, but never more than an open-handed slap that I now realise must have been pulled, or a tug on a ponytail, never anything that would qualify as assault or child abuse. On the other hand, when I was seven a distant cousin raped me, and later I have been assaulted by strangers, twice amounting to more than a passing grope. So reading on please keep in mind that I have no lived experience of much of this.
Right. So. Is it innately worse to be raped than beaten, no matter how severe the beating? Do people say, after a beating, that the person subjected to it (a) must have somehow invited it? (b) would be better off dead? Not in my limited experience, which admittedly encompasses rather a lot more sexual than non-sexual assault (both lived and heard), but perhaps.
Domestic violence is often excused on the same lines as sexual assault, but of course in my country at least marital rape isn't thought of as rape, and till quite recently women had to prove cruelty in addition to infidelity in order to gain a divorce, and last year a friend of mine obtaining mutual sep. had to hear in court that she was a whore and was then scolded by the judge and her lawyer for being over-sensitive.
Like marriage, slavery is dicey. Slaves of course have no rights, any more than married women have the right to deny their husbands carnal use of their body (in India and I'm sure elsewhere), and I have often wondered what a body slave does, exactly. It's a little futile wondering whether it's more degrading being your master's bedslave or cleaning out his piss-pot. Personal preferences, of course, but you might very likely be forced into both. Interestingly, though, accd. to the Arthasastra, female debt-peons and temporary slaves at least could not be forced to attend their master in the bath, and David Graeber in Debt reports that the Irish rather feared their daughters being reduced to washerwomen than about them being sexually forced. Cultures that care less about the virginity of their women, and more generally about the rights of men to the bodies of women, tend not to care about rape in quite the same way, might even (though I can't say) think about it as an assault in more physical terms. The rape of adult men in heteronormative societies is, of course, framed as a delightful experience if committed by women, and some strange proof of effeminacy when committed by men. I can't think off-hand of any older society that extends the possibility of honourable, non-constrained same-sex experiences to free, adult, men, but it would be interesting also to know what any such thought of rape as committed upon men.
But having said these things, then, onto that ideal rape of modern society: committed by strangers and preferably including violence and proof of struggle. What makes it worse than a physical assault of comparable brutality? Sexual assault is often compounded by other physical violence (object penetration, multiple penetration, violence to other parts of the body considered sexually arousing, etc), and the genitalia are a tender spot, but it would hurt as much to have one's legs broken, or head bashed in, or to be kicked about. Or all of these together. Or to be electrocuted or have one's nails ripped off or eyes gouged out or bits of one cut away.
We don't wish these people dead, though, or not often. Unless they are marginalised, Otherised, criminalised by our societies, we don't believe they deserved it, or were asking for it.
Maybe it has something to do with women being the world' largest minority. Maybe it has to do with women still being more-or-less property, socially if not legally, and men defining their own worth by rights to the bodies of women, within and outside marital relations. Honour, that beautifully cruel concept, measurable in women. Sex with a woman is an assertion of one's own right, or a violation of someone else's, so that for a seduction the lover must recompense the father/husband, and so that a woman who exposes her hand might have it cut off lest it tempt righteous men. So that a woman who has been raped is an animate bit of property who has strayed her bounds and ought have known better and ought better have died.
When I was young, my aunt, not knowing about me once very seriously informed me that I didn't know this but if I were raped I would wish rather to have died than left alive. More recently she lamented that rapists these days didn't even leave their victims alive to start over. Everywhere the same story: either that one ought have died, or that one must being anew. A forced little death, or worse than death, wine turned vinegar masquerading as wine. A lamed horse shot, or relearning to race in an inspirational story.
People's voices drop, turn soft and solicitous when I tell them I was raped, even if I'm being casual over it, even if I'm being a mean asshole and using the story to core rhetorical points. I've been raped, and I passed out from how it hurt, and I was seven, and afterwards I sat around and spoke to him some more. And then I went home and did my homework and coloured and chased puppies like an idiot and calves like someone with no sense whatsoever. Because here's the thing. My life didn't end. And it didn't start over. There was no cheesy montage. For a few years I reacted badly to being embraced from behind, but that was from a different assault. I was seven and introverted and a fairly angry kid, and I stayed that way.
I doubt that would have been the case if people knew, if I'd told my mum. I'm pretty sure I'd have been believed, so it's not that. But it would have been "ah, that's why!" for the rest of my life, the way it is sometimes when I tell people that I'm a lesbian and that I was raped. So few people believe it isn't cause-and-effect. So goddamned many treat me like an inexplicable zombie, wandering around eighteen odd years after fate worse than death enveloped me.
It hurt, mind. It hurt and I was unnerved and scared and more than a bit confused. But if a fifteen-year-old boy had taken me to his room and inexplicably thrashed me, I'd have been all the same things. So what is it that is different, that I cannot ascribe to heteronormative patriarchy, and why is it that violence against women, or even villainy on part of fictional characters, is so often codified into rape?
ETA: Using my 'kanai' icon because rewatching the B.R. Chopra Mahabharat drives in the fact that for a text extremely open about violence, and an ability to provide human-and-divine (so that the divine is mostly ignorable) motivation for most actions, it skirts like hell around the question of Draupadi being disrobed and/or assaulted even while talking a *lot* about family honour in exactly that context, and avoids it entirely through divine intervention with yards and yards of sari.
no subject
There's nothing *in the act* that makes rape worse. The intent applies to the reaction it receives, doesn't it? Rape is worse because we treat it as worse, because women's worth is tied to sexual access in a way men's worth isn't. Though of course m/m rapes are treated as a similar loss of honour for roughly cognate reasons.
Rape is control *because* of how we think about sex, because rapists weaponise that system of thought, whereby a woman who has been violated is (a) less, (b) somehow belongs to the rapist. Or in a larger way to any man with whom there is sexual contact, however unwilling.
And thank you, though I very much doubt he did.