Rape porn: a ban is not the answer

Content note: This post discusses rape

There have been a fair few debates about rape porn since campaigners have called for it to be banned. It is a thorny topic, and one where, unfortunately, a lot of people are saying some dodgy shit.

One of the biggest problems with this conversation is everyone seems to be talking at cross-purposes about what rape porn actually is. As far as I can unpick from the original statements, the campaigners have been talking about porn with simulated rape scenes, rather than filmed images of rape and abuse. The latter is already highly illegal, and I cannot in good conscience refer to what that is as “rape porn”, much as I wouldn’t refer to images and video of child abuse as “child porn”. To do otherwise completely elides the nature of what it really is: a cinematic trophy of a violation. There is nothing defensible about such double vi0lations: the rape, and then the publicising it.

Rape porn, the simulated stuff, is distinct from this, as it can be consensual. I am not saying it always is, as goodness knows there can be a terrible attitude towards workers’ rights in the porn industry which is something that needs tackling (and cannot be tackled with stigma towards the work that they do. When it is not consensual, it falls under the category above). However, it can be consensual. In private life, people explore rape fantasies fully consensually. In porn, this fantasy is also explored, and porn performers are perfectly capable of consenting to the work they do, about as much as anyone is capable of consenting to anything under capitalist patriarchy.

But what of the audience? As Emily Rose points out, it’s not just rapists who get off on rape porn. And does rape porn really contribute to a culture of normalising rape more than anything else? I am not so sure: part of the way rape porn is packaged is often with the hook that this is wrong, and this is taboo, and that is what is supposed to make it sexy. And yes, of course, our culture is steeped in rape, a background drone of violence and a dismissal that any of it is a problem. I am not sure why the focus of this campaign is on porn with simulated rape: why single this out when one cannot turn on the TV without seeing rape everywhere, when one cannot load up the internet without seeing jokes about rape, when one cannot walk through Bloomsbury without seeing posters advertising a conference organised by rape apologists? I do not see why there is more of an objection to people getting off on fantasies about rape rather than laughing about it, rather than trivialising it, rather than dismissing it as an entirely normal part of sex. Sexual violence is fundamentally about an expression of power rather than the sex itself.

I am not suggesting we should ban all of these things along with rape porn. Sadly, things will never be as easy as a simple demand to ban this or that. It changes nothing, it just pushes it out of sight. Furthermore, bans on specific types of porn do little to actually stop it from happening. The first porn I ever saw, when I was wee and the internet was a newfangled thing to have in one’s house, was of a man having sex with a cow. This is illegal in the UK, but it was quite literally the first thing I stumbled upon when I went looking for porn. The way that the bans are deployed to often as a weapon against people society doesn’t much like anyway. The queers and the  kinksters and the porn performers themselves. For a fine example of this, look no further than the recent fisting trials. So I am highly dubious that a ban would do anything to solve the problem of cultural acceptance as rape, and, if anything, may exacerbate problems for those who society would rather look the other way from anyway.

So what might work instead? My ultimate solution is the same as ever, and the one which is unpopular among liberals: we need that fucking revolution. Capitalism, rape culture, patriarchy, they all need to go. I understand that this might take a while, so I also have a transitional demand.

When people play with power dynamics, negotiation is utterly crucial. A conversation beforehand about what everyone involved wants, what their boundaries are, a safeword when “no” and “stop” are to be ignored. These are measures which are vital for safety of everyone playing, but they are also pivotal in helping everyone involved enjoy the scene as such negotiation ensures that people are getting what they want. Often, BDSM porn features an interview with the participants before and after, talking about what they want and what they enjoyed about the scene. Sometimes, the process of negotiation is shown.

Showing this process of negotiation would go far to mitigate some of the problems within porn. And not just in the edgy BDSM porn, but to extend this practice to vanilla porn. To normalise the process of negotiation and enthusiastic consent by embedding it in the porn we watch. For the stuff wherein non-consent is the fantasy, this can go at the beginning. And in vanilla porn, wouldn’t it be nice to see the ongoing process of enthusiastic consent through communication during sex? The performers could decide what they would and would not like to do, and we would all be party to this dialogue and begin to use it ourselves.

And then we smash everything, because that revolution still needs to happen.

G4S running rape support. Fuck that shit.

Content note: This post discusses rape and the aftermath

I have written before about why I never reported my rape to the police, and reams about the trail of disgusting fuck-ups the police have displayed in handling of rape. I know that many feel the same way, unable to trust this violent, patriarchal institution to help healing and justice. Yet some do, or at least see going to the police is the best option available. And for some, the police really are helpful. For the rest of us, we look at the police and plot revolution, plot for a day when they are the best option for none as we deal with the entrenched societal problem with rape and let go of models of retributive justice, doing away with this coercive arm of the state.

Getting rid of the police and their role in dealing with the aftermath of rape requires a revolution. It doesn’t require what the state are doing: outsourcing rape support services to G4S. It is reported in the Birmingham Mail that the private security company will be managing sexual assault referral centres in Walsall and Birmingham, where their staff will be present in the centres doing medical assessments and providing advice. The regurgitated press release informs us that survivors will not even have to speak to the police first. Under privatisation, this coded little phrase usually means “because the police will send them there anyway”.

In the context of the state’s continued programme of cutting literally everything that makes life a little more tolerable, they are presenting us with a choice: get nothing for rape support, or have G4S. In a conversation on Twitter last night, I idly wondered which was worse, my own personal thoughts drifting towards it being G4S. A reply from @gherkinette helped put my finger on a lot of the problem: “allowing people to trust you and then fucking up is in my experience worse than no help at all. Others may disagree.”

Once, I told a friend I trusted about the awful things that had happened to me in greater detail than I have ever told anyone else. I was rewarded with a complete lack of sensitivity and unhelpfulness, a nagging sense of not being believed. I am no longer friends with that person, and it was not at all conducive to my own healing process, throwing me into a deep depression and rendering it nearly impossible for me to talk about any of this stuff with reference to my own personal experience. I sometimes beat myself up for putting my trust in that person, even though on a level I know that the fault was theirs and not mine.

So I can only imagine how fucking awful it must be for a survivor to make the decision to report, and be lumbered with G4S and their enormous scope for fucking up enormously. As a private company, they are far less accountable for errors than the police–who have proved, time and time again to avoid accountability at all costs. What we know of G4S is that it was they who were responsible for a cock-up of such magnitude that the Army had to be called in. That they are famous for running prisons and detention centres for immigrants, hardly a sector known for its sensitivity. That they undertake similar work in Israel and Palestine. And now, that the responsibility for sensitively helping survivors of sexual violence is being placed in their incapable hands, all for the sake of a political agenda.

They have ruined many lives already, and the doors have been thrown open for them to ruin more lives in new, different ways.

It is a repugnant state of affairs that this task is being entrusted to G4S. We need that revolution more than ever.

An open letter to Barbara Hewson from a survivor

Following Barbara Hewson’s vicious comments about rape and sexual abuse, a survivor got in touch with me asking me to put up this open letter that she wrote. She prefers to remain anonymous and I have posted it here. Content note: this piece discusses sexual abuse and the psychological impact of sexual abuse. 

Dear Barrister Barbara Hewson,

Today you have called for the age of sexual consent to be lowered to stop “the persecution of old men” and warning against “fetishising victimhood” in the light of the case of Stewart Hall.

Let me tell you, Ms Hewson, victimhood is not something to be fetished or enjoyed. As many have already said your remarks represent the fear that all victims have of being disbelieved and the accusations of being attention seeking liars who enjoy victimhood. Abuse is something that haunts and damages you for the rest of your life, effects all the decisions you make, the friends and relationships you choose, the relationships with your family and how you feel about yourself. It will have you awake screaming & crying in the middle of the night, make you afraid of your own shadow and make you hate yourself and the body you live in. It can make you want to hurt yourself, cause resentment and anger towards others and makes it hard to trust anyone. Your remarks show just how much you, as a supposedly impartial party, know nothing about the experience of a victim.

I am one of the victims you seem to know so much about. I have twice been subjected to the selfish actions of a man, a family friend, in a position of power who wanted to rape a trusting little girl, initially aged just 11 and then 13, who didn’t understand what was going on. My brain and body was so in shock and in denial about what happened that I blocked it out for years, only realising aged 15 what had actually happened to me. I had suffered years of mental health problems following my abuse, managed to be expelled from school due to my explosions of rage and extreme self harm and was chastised by every adult for just being a “naughty child”, by my school, my GP and my family. The moment I pieced together that this family friend 12 years my senior, who I had looked up to and admired, had actually raped me in his home and later in a more public space, I attempted to take my own life by swallowing two packets of paracetamol and a bottle of vodka while my parents were out.

I never received counselling following my unsuccessful overdose and, because of the relationship my abuser and his family had with my parents, I felt too afraid to come forward. As a 15 year old with a reputation for a short temper and years of mental health problems that were often fobbed off as attention seeking or just teenage angst, I felt I had no hope of being believed over my university educated, well respected and liked abuser with a promising career who had recently married and was expecting his first child. Because of this I had to live with my fear and the fallout from my abuse alone, resulting in years of self-destructive behaviour; I withdrew from family, entered harmful and abusive relationships, allowed myself to be used and taken advantage of by friends because I just wanted to be liked, despite my academic ability, I fell behind with work, I would go out, get drunk and have sex with anyone who was willing regardless as to whether even knew their names just to feel something, endured crippling insomnia because of horrific nightmares, found myself pregnant at 17 and dealt with having an abortion without any support or the knowledge of family or friends.

I am still living with extreme feelings of worthlessness and the urge to hurt myself because of the damage sexual abuse has done to me. I am lucky because I finally found a partner I could trust enough to confide in, help me come to terms with what happened to me and start rebuilding my life. I have finally ditched all the false friends I accrued who took advantage of my vulnerable nature and desperation to be liked and accepted, and now have a network of supportive & kind people who genuinely care about me and my well being. However, I have never sought to prosecute my abuser because that fear of being disbelieved and being told that I am playing a victim for attention is so strong. Because of the nature of my family’s relationship with my abuser, I even have to see him sometimes and you cannot even begin to understand how difficult and terrifying that is. I have no hard evidence of my abuse other than the decades of damage inflicted on my psyche. If I even thought about approaching the CPS, after initial investigation the chances are that they would say prosecution wouldn’t be in the public interest, and even if it did go to court, me and my integrity would be put on trial and dragged through the mud by the defense, not what my abuser did to me. I have weighed this up in my mind more times than I can count and I have concluded that I cannot put myself through the experience again.

Ms Hewson, the fact that you as an esteemed barrister in a position of authority see it fit to perpetuate the rape apologism and victim blaming that is already so prevalent in our society and prevents victims coming forward, speaks volumes about how out of touch you are and how little you understand about sexual abuse. It’s all very well from your privileged position to fire off soundbites about “fetishing victimhood” and “persecuting old men”, but you cannot even begin to understand how damaging, disrespectful and false those statements are. As someone who has lived the majority of her life with the knowledge that she was raped when she was still a child and has suffered decades of psychological & behavioral damage as a result, your statements are just a another reminder of how society protects and excuses abusers and chastises victims. As a representative of the British legal system, you have a responsibility to seek justice for victims, not sustain the cycle of shaming them into silence, allowing those in positions of power to go on raping & abusing and ruining lives.

The worst thing I’ve read today

Content note: this post discusses child sexual abuse and rape apologism, quoting examples

It’s early in the day, I know, but it will be a difficult task to find something worse than this. In fact, it had managed to be the worst thing I’d read today at 12.15am. It really is that bad.

The BBC have decided to rather innocuously title what followed with “Age of consent should be 13, says barrister“. Well, I thought, stupidly clicking. They’re probably wrong for the usual reasons that adults calling for the age of consent to be lowered are wrong, but surely this can’t be too bad?

How wrong I was. Barrister Barbara Hewson, who writes in weeping syphilitic chode publication Spiked, has written something which follows the standard Spiked line–vicious, nasty, rape apologistic, wrong, and thinking it’s oh-so-clever. Brendan O’Neill himself, king of the chodes, would be proud. Being so desperately attention-seeking, I’m not actually going to link to the Spiked article, because fuck them and all the horses they rode in on.

Let’s take a look at Hewson’s opening gambit:

I do not support the persecution of old men. The manipulation of the rule of law by the Savile Inquisition – otherwise known as Operation Yewtree – and its attendant zealots poses a far graver threat to society than anything Jimmy Savile ever did.

Yes, that’s right. Someone who is ostensibly a barrister believes that the function of Yewtree was not to finally–decades too late–investigate institutional abuse of children. Rather, it was to persecute those poor old men.

The thing is, if the numerous institutions who knew about this–and, at best, did nothing–had fucking done something at the time, nobody would be arresting old men. The reason the men being investigated are old is because decades passed before anyone survivors were able to make their voices heard.

Next up, Hewson goes for the standard Spiked editorial line of arguing with imaginary Victorians who have teleported into the 21st century, pausing to give us a history lesson that some actual Victorians raised the age of consent to 16 based on the fact that puberty back then happened at 15, and that this was basically just the result of some sort of “moral panic”. Yes. Hewson actually thinks it was a little bit excessive to criminalise having sex with girls who had not yet hit puberty.

Following a long-winded whine about how much she hates the NSPCC, Hewson explicitly states that she doesn’t think survivors should use the courts to speak out:

The acute problems of proof which stale allegations entail also generates a demand that criminal courts should afford accusers therapy, by giving them ‘a voice’. This function is far removed from the courts’ traditional role, in which the state must prove defendants guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

I am not exactly sure how one can do this without letting survivors speak, but whatever. This lady is a barrister and in its own way, this point lays bare how woefully inadequate this sham of a justice system is in dealing with sexual violence.

In amid dismissing historic instances of sexual violence as merely “misdemeanours”, Hewson also decides to declare that only some sexual violence is worthy. And guess what? It’s pretty much that faulty folk notion where a man leaps out of a bush and rapes a virgin.

Touching a 17-year-old’s breast, kissing a 13-year-old, or putting one’s hand up a 16-year-old’s skirt, are not remotely comparable to the horrors of the Ealing Vicarage assaults and gang rape, or the Fordingbridge gang rape and murders, both dating from 1986. Anyone suggesting otherwise has lost touch with reality.

Apparently putting your hands on a young person who does not want to be touched are not the same as gang rape and are therefore, according to Hewson, OK. I am not letting this person anywhere near children.

So what are Hewson’s recommendations? Oh dear, they’re awful.

As for law reform, now regrettably necessary, my recommendations are: remove complainant anonymity; introduce a strict statute of limitations for criminal prosecutions and civil actions; and reduce the age of consent to 13.

In short, Barbara Hewson wants to make it as difficult as possible for survivors to come forward, and make it as easy as possible for powerful men to rape young people. It is absolutely clear that her justification for lowering the age of consent is simply to make it slightly less illegal for men like Jimmy Savile to rape them. To Hewson, age is the only matter here: if one is over the age of consent and not being attacked and raped by a stranger, it isn’t rape.

Which actually makes her a pretty shitty lawyer on top of writing something so hideously unpleasant.

As for the statute of limitations, this reduces the possibility of survivors coming forward, decades later, when it is safe, because apparently Hewson wants a legal system where it is as unsafe as possible to come forward. This is exacerbated by her call to remove anonymity for complainants, a point which appeared nowhere else in her argument. It is not a non-sequitur, though: it is clear that her purpose is to protect men who perpetrate sexual violence.

It always shocks me when I see something so awful as Hewson’s piece. I sometimes catch myself feeling somewhat optimistic, as though the battle against rape culture, while gory, will be one we can win. These fragile hopes are dashed where I see a person arguing from a position of power that the law should find new ways to silence survivors and keep them vulnerable. Make no mistake: our enemy is huge, and there is a whole army of those, like Hewson, who are complicit.

And so the fight goes on, bigger than ever. Yet I will not rest. I do not want to see these bastards win.

Update: Looks like Hewson’s chambers are running as quickly as possible in the opposite direction from her.

Kill all men

Well, well, well. It seems the latest thing feminism is fighting about is the phrase “kill all men”.

So, before I launch into this defence, let me point out that nobody is actually planning to kill all men. Not even some men. It’s just a phrase, an expression of rage, a rejection of a system which is riddled with violence.

“Kill all men” is a shorthand war cry, much the same as “ACAB” or “tremble hetero swine” or “die cis scum”. It represents a structural critique, presented in a provocative fashion. While my focus here is on “kill all men”, and therefore in relation to sexist oppression specifically, these points are applicable for all oppressors and all victims of oppression who dare to feel angry.

Patriarchy harms men, it’s true, but it oppresses the fuck out of women, and there are few, if any men who are not complicit in this oppression.  Most men are not rapists or abusers, but many are complicit in perpetuating this violence by spreading rape apologist myths, by failing to stand against violence against women and girls, and by simply not nailing their colours to the mast and acting as allies.

I remember once being at a reading group where we were discussing the SCUM Manifesto. It was a mixed group, and we had loads to chat about. If you haven’t read SCUM, I’d well recommend it, as while its conception of gender is kind of rooted in its time, there’s a very astute analysis of how patriarchy and capitalism interact to produce a system which oppresses women. There’s also some very clever satire of the thinking of the time, flipped and reversed on its head to present a biological argument as to why men are inferior. In fact, the whole thing just inverts this system in which violence against women and girls is endemic, and exaggerates the problem to its logical conclusion. It’s really a very good text, whether or not its author truly believed what she’d written.

Part of the power of SCUM is the effect it has on men. At my reading group, the men present were allies, and I remember vividly one saying “I don’t think she went far enough at the end, letting some of the men live and act as the Men’s Auxilliary”. All of the other men nodded along. They got that this idea is just fantasy, just a satire.

On the other hand, it’s pretty difficult to mention SCUM (or indeed just cry “kill all men”) without the misogynists crawling in, crying misandry.

And this is because misogynists completely fail to understand how power works. They miss the fact that in this society, violence against women and girls is rife, that it is an everyday occurrence which is seen to at best utterly unremarkable and at worst funny or aspirational. Saying “kill all men” and violence against women and girls are completely different. There is no serious threat of the women rising up and actually killing all men, all the while the hum of background noise of another women raped, murdered or beaten by a man. That this culture of violence is gendered, and the system is set up in favour of keeping things that way.

So is it any wonder that sometimes women are angry enough to express a wish to see their oppressors dead? And that this violent revenge fantasy remains just that–a revenge fantasy?

I suppose it is hardly surprising that utterances of killing all men draw such ire, even from feminists. Under patriarchy, violence is the domain of men. It is no coincidence that when women fight back, it is seen as disgusting: it allows the system to thrive. This is why more column inches are given to women who kill their partners who have abused them every day; this is why we see such sexualised depictions of women being violent in films, defanging the raw aggression; why patriarchy freaks the fuck out over Rihanna or Christina Aguilera singing about vengeance. And it’s why even merely uttering “kill all men” is seen as so shocking: we’ve internalised this sentiment, and the idea that women are not violent or angry. It is unthinkable that we can think violent thoughts.

So no, we’re not actually advocating killing all men, but what we need is for men to understand why we might. A secondary function of this powerful little phrase is to seek out allies. Some men simply cannot fathom that we might be this furious. And they cannot help us as allies, as we need.

And of course, all men are not deserving of death. In fact, most of them aren’t. I can think of a fair few I do wish painful, violent death on, although this remains but a fantasy. Patriarchy would destroy me were I to ever touch a hair on their head. Patriarchy already tries to punish me for merely expressing these thoughts, because they are unbecoming of a woman.

Remember, we are born and socialised into a culture of violence. Is it any wonder we may entertain violent fantasies against our oppressors at times?

Further reading:
Red Terror and #killallmen (Riotstarz)- An absolutely brilliant series of tweets on the topic.
Why can’t we kill all men? (Fearlessknits)- An alternative take, well articulated.

 

A public service announcement: Rolf Harris’s arrest has not ruined your childhood

Content note: this post discusses rape and sexual abuse

The latest name attached to the Yewtree arrests is Rolf Harris. A lot of us UK-dwellers were entertained by Harris’s TV shows as children, with all the art and songs and lovely things. So it might have come to a shock that he was arrested for sexual offences since he seemed so nice, and was an integral part of our childhoods in the sort of way those TV nostalgia countdown shows dictate an integral part of our childhoods.

It hardly comes as a surprise, then, that people have been crying out that their childhoods have been ruined because their televisual idol has been arrested. While this represents, at least, a nascent sense of taking sexual offences seriously, it is still a deeply problematic thing to say.

Someone you watched on TV getting nicked for sexual offences doesn’t ruin your childhood. All of those happy memories of eating jelly and seeing if you could tell what it is yet are still intact. This was still how you passed some of your childhood, in between using jumpers for goalposts and eating Spangles and whatever else you did back in those days. Yes, it may leave a bad taste in your mouth to know that later he was arrested for something vile, but this does not mean that your childhood was in any way ruined.

If you want to know what a ruined childhood looks like, why not start with the survivors of other Yewtree suspects, or the instigator of the whole thing, Jimmy Savile? Children were raped and abused by powerful men. It happened, and will continue to happen, for as long as we allow rape culture to thrive.

To say that someone you don’t know but enjoyed watching on telly getting nicked ruined your childhood trivialises these frighteningly common occurrences which have very real consequences in destroying not just a childhood, but often a whole life. Sexual violence is not a walk in the park for anyone, and leaves emotional scars that cut deep.

The view is inextricably linked with a very common trope of rape culture: a focus placed on the perpetrator rather than on survivors. This way of looking at things has negative consequences and stands in the way of ever getting anything done (see the pervasive notion that being accused of rape is the worst thing that can happen to anyone, for example).

So no, Rolf Harris’s arrest did not ruin your childhood. To say otherwise trivialises and erases the reality of sexual violence.

The most shitbrained bollocks I’ve read today (but only because I’ve been busy)

I don’t doubt that there has been a lot of shit going on today. It is, after all, a day, and the odds of shit not happening on this day are astronomically low.

However, let me introduce you to what happens when you let a six year-old rape supporter who likes it when women feel unsafe write for the Telegraph. You get articles like this one, entitled “The prudes of the NUS hate boozy, popular ‘lads’. So what do they do? Smear them as rapists“. Now, I’ll grant its dicknozzle author the right to be distanced from the title, which could easily be the work of a subeditor of a similar dicknozzle mindset, but the rest of the article is a pure shitbrained wankfest.

Poor little Jack Rivlin is rather baffled by a report from the NUS which found women to feel unsafe around large groups of lads–specifically, the WOAAAARGH BANTER wankstains crowd. He thinks it’s “hysteria”, which sends up the red flag screaming that this little carbuncle is a seething misogynist.

After rather smugly suggesting there’s no evidence that “slutdropping” ever happened–which, given his critical thinking skills, he seems to believe equates to the entire rest of the report being unevidenced–Jack decides to offer his own unevidenced assertion about what is actually going on.

Wait for it, everyone.

This is really really clever.

Brace yourselves.

Seriously, hold on to your hats, gloves, scarves.

Hold on to your fucking knickers.

Are you in the brace position?

This devastatingly clever insight from Jack Rivlin about rape culture on university campuses will blow your fucking minds.

We’re just jealous, apparently.

Based on literally no evidence whatsoever, Jack Rivlin has blown the lid off the entire conspiracy. We don’t really care about preventing rape, he’s absolutely right. We just care about making life shit for the popular men who have better lives than us.

Shit. Rumbled.

It’s quite staggering how unable Jack Rivlin is to put the pieces together and understand how research works, and connect the microcosm on his university campus–”just normal guys enjoying their youth”–to a broader rape culture. He needs to pay some fucking attention. Did he miss the news entirely during Steubenville? Has he missed the research into the prevalence of rape–and rapists–on campuses? Does he innocently think that rape is a problem between individuals rather than shaped at all by culture?

I think he does, in his own rather dissonant way–he mentions the SWP, for example. It is merely another example of someone ignoring or actively downplaying rape when it is perpetrated by someone on their own team. Much like the SWP, really.

So I don’t know why I ended up giving this inconsequential tediousness the time of day. I really don’t. There’s nothing new and nothing interesting in it. It just annoyed me, because rape culture is, at best, boring and annoying.

There is nothing unusual about the Steubenville rape

Trigger warning: this post discusses rape and rape apologism

And so the sad story of the Steubenville rape continues. The perpetrators were found guilty of raping an unconscious girl, as many others looked on and watched, finding this assault nothing more than an exciting topic for gossip. A community was torn apart as the perpetrators happened to be integral members to the football team, their important social standing meaning that many decided to twist reality and try to fervently believe–and make others believe–that this was somehow the fault of the survivor. And even after the guilty verdict, the rape apologism continued, pundits mourning the fallen careers of the perpetrators. And Steubenville, in a bid to make sure this never happens again, has decided to launch a probe into why it all came to pass.

Time will tell what is unearthed, what conclusions are drawn by these officials, what they learn from what happened in this community.

I’ll save them the time and expense of their investigation.

It was rape culture. All of it.

It is perhaps more horrifying to realise just how banal this whole affair was. That perhaps this exact combination of circumstances and individuals involved is unique, but all of these aspects happen regularly, devastatingly regularly. It is almost impossible to unpick how these aspects interacted with one another to cause what happened, so forgive me if what I say jumps back and forth. All of this is connected.

Rape happens a lot. An awful lot. We are socialised to believe that there are a lot of things which are acceptable. In the “no means no” model of consent, silence is take as a form of assent. This particular survivor was unconscious. She could not say no. And rape culture creates a perception of some survivors as more acceptable targets than others. That if one does not behave in a perfectly patriarchy-approved fashion, one is at least partially to blame for what happens. Drinking alcohol is one of those factors. That young woman became fair game through her behaviour. This was seen in the hurricane of rape apologism attempting to defend the perpetrators, but it also went some way to explaining why it happened to her in the first place.

This is not to say she was in any way responsible. She was not. In the minds of the perpetrators, and all those who stood by and filmed her violation with their phones, though, she was. They diffused their own responsibility and projected it onto the survivor.

Those bystanders, they are far from uncommon. It is perhaps unusual for them to document this in such a fashion, but people have stood by, idly observing violence since time immemorial. You have no doubt heard of Kitty Genovese.  I don’t doubt that the majority of people present that night thought that what was happening was all right, and, as person after person failed to challenge this assault, it rapidly became seen as normal. The social power of the perpetrators, and the close-knit status of some of the bystanders no doubt exacerbated this effect.

And the social power of the perpetrators meant that others who had not been there that night were more willing to excuse what they did. When powerful men rape, communities all too often close ranks around them, throwing the survivor to the wolves. There is a pervasive belief that being accused of rape is worse than being raped–a line of argument which its proponents like to pretend they are not promulgating by claiming that in this instance, they’re definitely not talking about a rape. It was imaginary, they say, and it ruins a man’s life.

To an extent, it does, though only in the unlikely event they are found guilty by a broken and corrupt system of justice. However, why shed tears for them, rather than opening up to sympathy for the survivor? It seems all too easy for too many people socialised within this culture of violence to instead sympathise with the perpetrators.

And yes, some are saying the sentences are too short, while others are saying the sentence is too long. Both of these arguments are rooted in a belief in retributive justice. It is my belief that this system cannot help address the cultural attitudes that make rape possible. Indeed, it may make it harder to address these: it reinforces the view that a rapist is some sort of aberrant monster rather than your friend, your boyfriend, your star quarterback, those people that you know and you respect, those people that you love. And this belief stays your hand in stopping them, and it sticks in your throat to admit that what happened was rape.

It was rape culture that made Steubenville happen, and it will be rape culture which will mean that this will happen again and again. Each time the exact combination of circumstances and individuals involved will be unique, but all of these aspects happen regularly, devastatingly regularly.

What we need to stop this is a radical shift in our thinking about everything. Steubenville was torn apart as a community by this rape, and Steubenville can heal itself, transform itself. Steubenville needs transformative justice. We all do.

We need to learn from this, examine what happened and think of new ways of organising, new ways of holding perpetrators accountable, new ways of supporting survivors and new ways of unlearning the cultural attitudes that allow rape to happen. We need change. Actual, real change at every single level.

It is a vast task we have ahead of us, but it is the only way to ensure that this banal culture of violence is demolished, once and for all.

Rape in the headlines: is there a war on?

Trigger warning for rape

A quick look at the headlines today reveals a bucketload of stories about rape, sexual abuse and sexual assault. From the utterly unsurprising revelation that the police had heard complaints about Jimmy Savile and did precisely fuck all to the lead singer of a band appearing in court charged with conspiracy to rape a baby. From the death of one of the Delhi gang rapists to the ongoing fallout in the SWP over their utter failure to deal with sexual violence. All the way round to this utter shit-turd in the Daily Mail declaring that it’s actually the fault of teenage girls that they get sexually harassed and assaulted by powerful men [clean link, but don't read it if you don't want to spend the rest of the day furious/sad/triggered].

Is the media actually starting to care? Is this war finally going to be fought, colours nailed to the mast and the battle lines being drawn? On the one side vile old rapists, the cops and Petronella Wyatt, and on the other, everyone else? Could it possibly be that that is what is happening at last?

Nope.

To quote @FutureFutures, who encapsulated the problem perfectly in two words, rape sells.

They aren’t actually interested in reporting the nagging background reality of the fact that women get raped every single fucking day. They are interested in portraying only that which can be made lurid and reported in exactly the same way as one might report expenses fiddling or a public divorce.

The “real life” magazines have pursued this business model for decades, to the point where sometimes I wonder whether Take A Break editors are contractually obliged to include at least one “RAPED AT KNIFEPOINT BY THE GAS MAN” story per issue.

And it sells. It sells because they instances of rape that get reported are unimaginably horrid to far too many people. What gets put in the newspapers is mercifully rare: the stranger rapes, the celebrity rapists, and so forth. These are the ones deemed newsworthy not due to the fact that what happened was a rape, but rather, the glamour of celebrity or the tears of human tragedy.

For society at large, this war is not being fought. It’s just entertainment, a thing that sells papers and is interesting to read about.

The real war will continue to go unreported, unremarked upon. It is banal to those who set the agenda. It is traumas inflicted daily, it is denial that what happened was a problem. It is a deafening conspiracy of silence. It is rape apologism, trivialisation and dismissal. It is violence, it is manipulation. It is a feeling of unease, a burning desire for vengeance, a tenderness as friends mop away the tears. It is families and friends torn apart over who to believe, it is fear and it is loathing. It is feminists attempting to make noise, silenced by the dominant opinion that there is not a problem. It is support in any way possible.

And the war will rage on, unreported and unremarked upon, because all of these aspects of rape and rape culture are unmarketable. After all, it is only a certain line that will sell.

Fuck off, Ray Winstone

Hi there, Ray Winstone. I note you’re feeling rather sad, having witnessed what you no doubt consider to be a horrific sexual assault. The violent predator, Mr High Taxes, viciously violated Britain in an aggressive rape lasting for…

I’m sorry, I can’t even continue trying to sarcastically repeat what you said because FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF YOU VILE SHITTING DICKBURGER FUCK OFF AND BURN.

Rape is rape. Taxes are taxes.

Sure, it might make you a bit annoyed that you have to pay a bit of money to the state. I’m not exactly happy about it either. At least you got a hefty tax cut in the last budget–at least, I assume you did, despite one of your more recent film credits only taking the princely sum of £747.

Sorry, I digress.

Paying tax is somewhat trivial in comparison to rape. It really, really is. I’ve experienced both, and I should know. Fuck it, even if you haven’t experienced it, you should fucking well know this.

Every time another smug prick with a tedious opinion compares whatever their whiny cause is to rape, it trivialises rape, makes society take it less seriously. It is turning to countless survivors and shouting in their faces “Well, you think you’ve got problems? I have to pay some of my loads of fucking money, just like everyone else does. Also, there’s a windfarm near my house, and windfarms are also worse than that.” It is saying that violence doesn’t matter, that what really matters is making things comfier for those who are already comfortable.

It betrays a staggering ignorance at best, and, at worst, a willful lack of empathy so severe that you deserve to be swallowed by a horse’s anus.

But I’m feeling merciful today, Ray. I’ll tell you what, you go and fuck off and educate yourself. You go and fucking apologise for your shitty comments and genuinely learn why your comparison was a nonsense. You sort your fucking life out.

And then, come the revolution, maybe we’ll be merciful. Maybe we won’t inflict the worst punishment imaginable on you. Maybe we won’t raise your taxes.