I have a friend that used to work with battered women. Because of that experience, he refuses to read books that include rape scenes.
He occasionally asks me what I’ve read that I would recommend. I find that there are very few books that I can recommend to him, because so many of the pop sci-fi/fantasy books that are out now include rape at some point in the book.
I find it disturbing what a large percentage of books contain rape, not as an actual scene that is necessary to advance the story, but as a side scene or background. Something that could easily be left out of the story.
I think it’s a bad sign that rape has become an acceptable page filler in books. Rape culture is too strong, but we are far to complacent about sexual abuse/violence.
Well, I was using that for shorthand to point out that we only like to prevent bad things from happening to ‘‘socially acceptable’’ people, but I do see what you mean. The reality is that there are geographical communities with very high reports of all types of violent crime, including rape, and the efforts would really best be served in those places. The actual incidence of sexual assault and rape at say, my university, which is known for its insular and elitist character, is probably much lower than it is in the high-crime area of South Philadelphia. Yet when we look at where the REAL anti-rape activism is taking place, even on a national scale, it comes down to serving the needs of white middle-class college students.
The best example I can give you is the AIDS epidemic. It took forever for people to care about AIDS because it was perceived as largely a ‘‘gay problem.’’ When the social policy debate was finally framed, it was framed using case examples of children with blood transfusions and little old ladies dying, because the nation couldn’t be bothered to move on a disease that was only killing queers. Nevermind that little old ladies and children were about the least at-risk demographic–they were the ones that society felt moved to protect. And that’s bullshit. It’s bullshit over which an inconceivable number of people suffered and died agonizing deaths.
Let’s raise general public consciousness, absolutely, but let’s target our resources toward populations who need them the most.
And just because we can’t prevent rape for a prostitute or a homeless person, that doesn’t mean we can’t have supportive services in place for dealing with the trauma’s aftermath. One of the biggest mitigating factors of a trauma’s psychological impact, as I mentioned earlier, is the degree of support the victim has following the trauma, and whether or not irrational cognitions about the attack (e.g. ‘‘I brought it on myself’’) go uncountered. Our prison system is a clusterfuck of abuse and human rights violations, though; I wouldn’t even know where to start with that, but that doesn’t mean I think nothing should be done.
The truth is, any effort to combat oppression is going to indirectly address this problem. For example, if we create transition homes for the chronically homeless, (a move which has bee proven not only to reduce recidivism but also to save public funds) those people are going to be in situations where they are less likely to be victims of sexual assault.
Correction: why do some women think they should get a pass?
I think it’s an antiquated notion that does more harm for our cause than helps it.
Tastes of Chocolate, I get your point, and I sympathize with your friend, but rape fantasies are extremely common for both women and men. Isn’t it possible that the reason there is rape or almost-rape in romance novels is because a lot of women want it there? I suppose at that point is becomes a ‘‘chicken-and-egg’’ dilemma, though.
Is rape all that prevalent in books/movies/etc.? I hear people saying that it’s too common and they just won’t see movies/shows with rape in it. It just seems odd because isn’t the opposite something people used to complain about–that we just pretend this thing doesn’t happen? I think it’s better to talk about things than not to.
I think I can agree with this, especially if it means we spend our resources where they can do the most good. More police in high-crime areas (for instance) rather than fomenting fear amongst upper-middle class college students.
ISTM that this is an unfortunate example, because I agree with you when you say -
One of the problems (in my view) of presenting AIDS as “no longer a disease of them, but a disease of everybody” is that it can lead to the kind of misallocation of resources that we both agree is unfortunate. The reality is that, in America, AIDS continues to be what it always was - a disease confined mostly although not entirely to gay and bisexual men, IV drug users, and their sex partners and children. This is not necessarily a group small enough to ignore, but it isn’t everybody.
And therefore we spend a heck of a lot more on AIDS than we do on other diseases that affect more people. I think this is at least in part due to the “ABC Disease of the Week” movie approach to AIDS, where the complacent middle class housewife gets AIDS from her adulterous husband’s one night stand with a prostitute, and spends her remaining days being noble and raising consciousness. A scenario like that is not exactly impossible, but the possiblity of it are vanishingly small compared to, say, nephritis or nephrosis.
There I guess I bow to your superior knowledge - I have no expertise in the treatment of post-traumatic stress.
When you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail - when you have a fierce belief that you’re a disadvantaged underclass, every action looks like a slight by The Man. Same goes for folks who are fanatics about the “War on Christmas,” yet are bitter about “hollow” ceremonial deism when God is invoked.
Here is an article about prison rape, which notes that the majority of prison rapists are corrections officers, not other prisoners. I think that’s enormously important.
The Wikipedia article on the same topic implies that rapists of men in prison are mostly other prisoners, while rapists of women in prison are mostly corrections officers, but I can’t find statistics broken down like that by gender.
Yeah…there are definitely feminist websites that take it to a new high. Or low? I’ve seen people claim that seeing pictures of an ad where a man was ogling a woman made them feel unsafe to be out alone. Or that pictures of women in death poses on Top Model means that our culture hates women and wants to kill them. I don’t know–for me, mostly a spade is a spade.
But those are MYSTERY novels. Some crime must be committed. The murder is part of the story line.
Again, a romance novel is at least on some level about sex.
These are all in sci-fi/fanasty novels. In most of the cases I’m remembering, the rape/assault isn’t necessary for the storyline. It’s not needed to advance or explain the characters. It doesn’t even seem to be there to shock. It’s just there to fill pages. It feels like rape is mentioned because it’s expected.
I’m not sure it’s so much about educating prostitutes as it is educating law enforcement and the media (and, I guess, the general public either directly or as a result). Dispelling the myth that some women are ‘unrapeable’ because of what they do for a living, or how much sex they have, which hardly stops at sex workers. Look at the case of Robert Picton
SO what’s the spade here? Sexualizing murder victims? Honestly, if you feel even question this fashion shootis overreacting, I wonder what you are allowed to critique.
I think the answer is somewhere in here. Culture is a very big, complex, and mostly hidden thing. Anthropologists like to say culture is like an iceberg, 10% visible an 90% unknown. Culture has many different factors pulling in different ways: time perception, relationships, individual versus society, etc. It’s not an either/or thing but a continuum.
The more patriarchal a culture is, the easier it is to dehumanize women. The phrase “Power corrupts” applies to sexual situations as well as political ones. When men are given a disproportionate amount of power, some men will use that power including in sexually abusive ways. Even though we’ve seen Western countries swing into a more egalitarian mindset in the past century, the whole society didn’t move together lock-step. Some places and sub-cultures are more patriarchal than others.
Does this mean we’ll ever become a non-rape culture by becoming more egalitarian? I sorrowfully doubt it. As long as people think they’re more special than anybody else, there will still be crimes of entitlement (such as Ponzi schemes). Sexual crimes will be included in that sense of entitlement as well.
[I had something about what it means to say a culture “permits” or “encourages” something (like sexual abuse) when most people (including me) are cowards and avoid conflict. But it didn’t make too much sense so I’m dropping it.]
But I just think that…why does it have to be “sexualizing murder victims”? Why can’t it just be a cool, fun photoshoot? Does everything have to be analyzed? Like, I’ve always been obsessed with horror movies and death and murder, and if I want to do a photo shoot or art project based on that, does it mean that I hate women? Or that I’m just kind of morbid/gothic? I just don’t believe that everything we do has to be interpreted as some kind of political message.
And I mean, I see images of guys being killed/hurt all the time in movies–are we living in a man hating society? Why is an image of a woman dying/hurt symbolic but for a man it’s just a movie scene/picture?
I think it’s a good thing. It looks like the ban will be lifted if the defendant is convicted. It will reduce the chances of false charges ruining a man’s life. It may even increase the number of cases going to court?
If defendants in rape cases are granted anonymity before conviction, then logically all defendants in all cases should receive this protection, right? Isn’t an unproven accusation of drug dealing or child abuse or embezzlement also carrying the prospect of “ruining a man’s life”?
Assuming it’s not the case already, I think there should be anonymity in all abuse cases.
In cases about embezzlement and drug dealing it’s not one person’s word against another and (I assume) the police have gathered plenty of evidence so there should be a good likelihood that the accused is guilty.
