It’s 1am, and I’m exhausted. I can’t sleep, though, until I get a few things off my chest.
If you know me IRL (and, perhaps, if you don’t), you may have witnessed a particularly uhm, lively post on my Facebook wall this evening. In case you missed it, I re-posted this image:
CLICK TO VIEW LARGER
I had thought it was pretty straightforward. The sentiment expressed in marxisforbros‘ response is pretty cut and dry: Women’s clothing should be irrelevant when it comes to rape (or sexual assault, or harassment, etc.).
Needless to say, I did not anticipate the resulting shitstorm. Currently, we’re at 55 comments (and counting).**
I, er, WHAT?? How did it come to this? Why are we debating rape? How is rape even debatable? I thought it was just common sense: rape is bad. Horrible. And that’s a gross understatement. Rape is never, ever, EVER the victim’s fault. To blame the victim is to further victimize them. To assume that rape ever occurs as a result of some action (or inaction on the victim’s part) is a result of sheer ignorance, or unwillingness to acknowledge the truth about rape. I had thought that these people, who I choose to call friends (be it on Facebook, or in the real world) were rather enlightened people. I had assumed that we were of similar minds, at least when it comes to issues like this. So how the hell did we end up with a thread that is 55 comments long, and caused at least two people to seriously question our relationships, and our society as a whole?
I bet you were expecting me to give you an answer, huh? Well, sorry, kids. I ain’t got one. Not this time.
Seriously. I’m confounded. I knew that people thought this way. Hell, I’m a religious follower of STFU, Conservatives, STFU, Sexists , and Cognitive Dissonance…I see posts with this type of insanity all the time. But it’s a little bit different, seeing the blurred avatars on a 13″ screen when you have distance–both geographical and emotional–from the people involved. When you realize that these are people who you know…the very same people you’d be likely to turn to if–god forbid–something were to happen to you…it’s jarring, to say the very least.
I feel sick. I feel sick because people still feel the need to justify rape, even when they don’t know that’s what they’re doing. I’m angry, but not just at some of the people who posted. No, what angers and disturbs me even more is the silence. You see, I currently have 456 friends on Facebook. How many engaged in this conversation? 10? (I don’t feel like counting. I hope you understand.) And of those, how many bothered to support my end of the debate? Yeah. It isn’t that no one agrees with me. I’ve had friends tell me they do, whether it be in a message as a result of this thread, or in some other, independent conversation. Yet their absence here seems profound. My entire point, in the original post, throughout this debate, has been that there is a HUGE freaking problem with the fact that we hold the victim responsible when it comes to rape. As a society, we antagonize those who have already been attacked and abused. The fact that no one wants to speak up in defense; that no one is willing to step forward and challenge this antiquated, sexist ideology kind of punctuates that.
According to a number of studies, 60% of rapes and sexual assaults go unreported. Do you think that the stigma; the fact that so many people look to blame the victim, or immediately assume that any accusations of rape or sexual assault are false might have anything to do with that?
Relevant:
I’m sorry if this post isn’t terribly cohesive. I’m not lying when I say I’m exhausted. This has me completely drained. Before I go to bed and hope for pleasant dreams that have nothing to do with sexual assault or rape apologists, though, I’ve got one last thing to add to the conversation. The best tips I’ve seen to date with regard to how to avoid rape/sexual assault:
Mull that over for a bit. I need to give my brain a break for a bit.
**My apologies for the choppy screenshots. Whenever I tried to take it all as one piece, I wound up with a bunch of lines either missing, or compressed. You can click on each chunk to make it larger. (And if you know of a good, free screenshot tool, let me know. I’m currently using Screen Capture for Chrome.)
***Although I’ve linked directly to the conversation, my Facebook privacy settings might not let you see it. I’m sorry about that, too, but I don’t feel like changing my settings at the moment.
The threading question in the beginning of this post somehow makes you think. Who in their right senses would want something like that to happen to their daughter/son. Though youngsters would think that parents or elder siblings are over protective, but I think it is only right. So they would be reminded once in a while to be cautious of what they are wearing and projecting.
I agree that no one wants that to happen to their child, but at the same time, why should we continue to feed into the misconceptions that one’s personal fashion choices *must* be representative of a particular intent, or, for that matter, that rape has anything at all to do with what a person looks like?
Why would rape not have something to do with an outfit &/or one’s looks, out of curiosity? My grandmother during WWI did her best at ~14 years old to act retarded and look filthy and sickly to discourage soldiers from raping her during war time in Poland. I am not a woman, so I can’t know for sure, but I would imagine ones dress has to do with everything. Getting a job, being asked on a date, being server as a customer – everything, so why whould it not influence rape?
Despite common belief, rapists don’t rape because a woman is particularly attractive. Rape is not about sex, it’s about power and control. As an acquaintance mentioned in the Facebook thread, she was raped while wearing her military uniform…not exactly what one might consider revealing or sexy attire. The idea that a woman is “asking for it” because of her clothing choices is misguided and sexist. By that logic, a man is open for sexual assault whenever he takes his shirt off. It just doesn’t make sense.
People need to stop trying to justify rape, stop blaming the victims (and their attitudes, their behavior, their clothing, etc.), and start holding the rapists accountable for their actions. No one ever invites rape.
I have two thoughts here. First, and most importantly, I absolutely agree with you. When rape occurs, the victim is not at fault, pure and simple. Putting aside some quibbles I have with statutory rape, as defined in New York, to me the issue is black and white. I actually met one person who believed that whenever a crime was committed, the victim was on the receiving end of some kind of karmic payback. That, to me, is just crazy.
To be fair, l haven’t read the entire comment thread from your post, but the idea that people actually invite brutal, senseless crimes JUST BY WALKING AROUND, sickens me. Unlike a thief who steals because he’s hungry, or the vagrant who breaks into a building for shelter, or a killer protecting family, there is no possible sympathetic angle in the case of rape.
That said, I DO believe everyone should take precautions to avoid becoming victims of crime. Simply put, there are crazy, sick, and evil people out there.
One final note: Don’t be too hard on people for not backing you up on Facebook. Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t have the excellent “mute this post” feature included in Google+. Personally, I find it tiresome when a thread gets into the teens, particularly when I’ve left a single comment and the rest looks like dogs fighting over a bone. In light of that, I can’t see a ton of people wanting to wade into a 50+ post.
Thanks for your perspective, Ron. I’m not terribly angry that people aren’t wading into this Facebook debate… I am, however, disappointed. Dismayed. I’ve seen threads about pancakes that have had hundreds of comments (within my personal FB sphere. I’m not talking about pages with thousands of followers; obviously that’s a different story), so the perceived indifference, or unwillingness to engage in *this* conversation bothers me.
That said, it IS possible to “mute” Facebook posts (though I assume most are unaware of this). If you go to the post (assuming you’ve interacted on it in some way), there should be a link underneath it next to “like”, “comment”, and “share” that says “unfollow post”. Click that, and you’re good to go.
Marvelous! I don’t know how I’ve never seen that before.
It might actually be a newer feature. I’ve only noticed it recently.
It is so disheartening when you almost unwittingly post something and you think, “This is just 100% logic, not an opinion type of thing”, and you get that kind of response. You’re totally right here, and I really don’t get where anyone else is coming from. Hopefully even though they argued with you, it’ll really make them think and reflect on what they’re saying, and maybe it will wake them up. In any case it’s good you wrote it here as well for others to learn from.
Exactly! I had expected the post to garner support, or otherwise go unnoticed. I think I was even more dismayed at the fact that probably half of the comments completely ignored the issue at hand. To get angry at the mention of violence in the response, but to totally ignore the implied rape/sexual assault in the question doesn’t make any sense to me. To nitpick about the implications of women’s fashion and the intent of people when it comes to their behavior and how they dress completely skirts the issue (pardon the pun). I want to scream at them all, “YOU’RE MISSING THE POINT!!!”.
You’re right. As exasperating as I’ve found this ordeal, the only reason I’ve continued the discourse is because I hope it will give someone pause, and cause them to really think about things.
DRAMA!
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