So How Do We Talk About Rape?

[rax]

Lately I've been working on talking about things when I think it's important to talk about them, even when doing so makes me uncomfortable. I've also, very recently, been trying to be more frank about what I don't know, and willing to be publically uncertain. So here's a post that contains a bunch of things that make me uncomfortable to share, and that I have absolutely no idea what to do about. As such, it might also contain a lot of things other people have said before or said better; I might be totally off base or missing something obvious. Please let me know if so.

I roll with a pack of genderheads, and sometimes conversation turns to rape[1].I usually refrain from talking about my own experiences. Frustratingly, not talking about my experiences makes me feel like I am silencing myself; I often am actively preventing myself from participating in conversations. However, when I do come in and bring up my own experiences, I feel both silenced and silencing. If a conversation is theoretical or about a specific issue of policy or behavior, and I say "This one time that I was sexually assaulted, the following things happened," conversation often shifts radically to be centered around my own personal experiences of sexual assault. Everyone is so sorry that I had to deal with that, and I have no idea how to respond. How did it happen? What have you done about it? Who did it, so I can be mean to them? That's not actually what I wanted to talk about. I didn't share the anecdote because I was looking for sympathy; I gave you details because they were relevant. I wasn't trying to win the argument, I was trying to relate to the issue the only way I know how, as someone with personal experience. At best when this has happened I've felt like the thread of conversation got lost in people tripping over themselves to make sure I knew they thought what happened to me was terrible; at worst I've felt like I accidentally used "I've been raped" as a thought-terminating cliche, winning an irrelevant argument, and felt guilty about bringing it up at all.

At the same time, when someone says "I'm sorry that happened to you," I do appreciate it. And I've gotten used to it. I don't know what it would feel like to be talking with a group of friends and just be frank about my experiences and have everyone take it for granted. What if it actually felt really horrible? I don't want to take rape and sexual assault for granted, I don't want that sort of statement to be just part of the scenery, and I don't want my experiences glossed over as if they aren't important, either. If this sounds like I want it both ways, it's because I do; I want every assault to be treated as unacceptable but I want to be able to discuss them calmly and impersonally. I have no idea how to do that.

At this point, anyone sufficiently on the Internet to read this post shouldn't need me to tell them that rape happens to many people, regardless of age, color, creed... There are various blog posts and forums and LJ communities where survivors (I'm pretty sure that's the right term? I'm not really a part of this community) get together and discuss their experiences, and anyone who wants to have an absolutely depressing and reality-inducing evening can go and read them. Hopefully you already know that a number of the people in your social group have been victims of rape, and most likely some of them have been perpetrators, too. You'll note I didn't list gender; for the most part these collections of rape stories are very gendered. Partially this is because rape itself, as a cultural phenomenon, as an exercise of power, is gendered. What we know both anecdotally and statistically suggests that this is true: The lion's share of rapes and sexual assaults have male perpetrators and female victims.

I recently read something someone I didn't know wrote that said something like "No discussion of rape is complete without referencing the Ceretapost." (I don't remember exactly where it was, or I would reference it.) This sort of bothered me. I don't know cereta , and I think that her original post --- about men and rape culture --- was valuable and worth reading. The comments made me really upset, though. I didn't read all 4000 because, well, I have a job, but there were a few themes I picked out, that I've also seen other places where this topic comes up in conversation:

• The idea that women shouldn't have to feel unsafe walking alone at night, because most rapes are committed by friends and acquaintances. Yes, thank you, I know this; what I'm concerned with here is a feeling of safety, something that can't just be rationalized away, because most is so, so far from all, and even if I'm not likely to be raped, I may very well be harassed.
• The idea that considering men dangerous or as potential rapists first is bad. I really want to agree, but I have a lot of difficulty doing so. There's a part of me that thinks this is one of the ways sexism hurts men and that I don't want to be part of perpetuating that in the name of feminism, and a part of me that looks at the other part and says "Are you crazy? Can you really afford to give men the benefit of the doubt like that?" The answer is, I don't know.
• A small number of people came up with things like "What about men raped by women, or same-sex rape? Where does that fit into this?" To which the answer was "That doesn't fit into the topic of this post," with a side of "You're derailing." Now, a couple of those posters actually were derailing, but is the idea derailing? I don't know. Having been raped by a woman, and raped while not everyone around me considered me a woman, I feel left behind by this argument, actively pushed out of the conversation. At the same time, I just said above that I wanted there to be room for serious conversations about specific elements of rape issues that weren't focused on my experience. So shouldn't I be glad that this conversation didn't apply to all of my assault experiences, not angry at being excluded? Isn't it important to have these conversations that happen in broad sweeping gendered terms, even if they leave some people or experiences out? (I think part of the problem with that is that the same people get left out, time and time again, but I don't have a good solution for that, or even know if it's true.)

I recently had a personal conversation with a good friend after having talked about one of my assault experiences. She felt strongly that I should push my friends to terminate connection with my assaulter, and to call my assaulter out on their behavior. I did not and do not want to do this; I do not feel the energy spent in making a big deal out of it is actually worth what little I might gain. After all, even if 100 people walk up to this person and tell them "You raped rax  and you're an asshole," I'm not going to be unraped. So I'd rather just let it slide and get on with my life. At first, I thought my friend was bringing it up on my behalf, and I tried to explain that it just wasn't worth it to me. After a while, I understood that it wasn't just about my experience --- it was also about her anxiety and her anger that someone could hurt me like that, and feeling of powerlessness in the face of horrible things happening to people she cared about. She expressed that she wished she knew who in her life had done such things so that she could call them out and ostracize them, and that it was difficult to not be able to, knowing that people she associated with regularly had gotten away with rape. And I feel bad, now, to be contributing to that; to some extent, it's like I'm defending and protecting them by not revealing them, even though what I'm trying to do is defend and protect myself. Oh, cultural systems of power, how clever you are at preserving yourselves!

So what do I want from people when I tell them this has happened to me? Mostly I want them to keep seeing me as a person, not as a "victim," not as someone needing physical or emotional protection, not as a shrill man-hater. Really it depends on context; I'm not averse to expressions of sympathy but if that takes away from the conversation, can we save it for later? Also, it's important to keep in mind --- but it's the sort of thing that I might forget if I didn't write it down here --- that not everyone's desires and needs in this space will be anything like mine. Maybe some people really want and hunger for that sympathy, that focus. Maybe some people feel very strongly that it should go completely unremarked, as if saying "Many years ago, I ate a sandwich." All of these things and more are valid, and I don't know how to handle them any better than anyone else, except when it comes to myself, really. [2]

So, given this, how do we talk about rape? How can we normalize these conversations so that we can be comfortable and make real progress? How can those of us with experiences share our experiences without centering them and without denying the trauma they contain? How can those of us without experiences express our opinions and participate in the conversation? How can we silence no one?

[1] I'm going to use "rape" here as shorthand for "rape, attempted rape, and sexual assault" both because it's convenient and because having a four-letter word to cover that seems valuable and maybe "rape" should be it? I don't know. I could write a whole post on that too except no thank you I have spent enough time on this already.

[2] What I do know is how I'd like you to respond to this post: Please, please don't comment and tell you how sorry you are that I was raped. I consider it safe to assume that you are displeased. If you really want to tell me anyway, send me a private message or an email. I'm much more interested in talking here about how we talk about rape and handle these conversations than in the particulars of my experiences or how terrible they must have been. Thank you.

Comments

[ckd]

This is not easy stuff for anyone to talk about, and that's unfortunate for everyone.

To look at only one of the several points you address: I think that women considering all (or most) men to be potentially dangerous is bad, yet sadly necessary. I don't mean this in a sexist way, but there is a power asymmetry in society and that's the direction it runs in. This doesn't mean that all men are rapists, nor does it mean that no women are; this also doesn't mean that this assumption is somehow not hurting the men who would never harass or assault a woman.

This just means that the costs of a false positive (someone feels bad) weighed against those of a false negative (someone is raped) make it better to err on the side of caution.

The only way to change this equation in a general way is to change the culture, which is hardly a simple task. The only way to change this in a specific situation is to build trust between the woman (or women) and the man (or men) involved.

I am flattered when someone says or otherwise indicates that they have that level of trust in me. I wish I weren't, because I wish it were possible for it to be a baseline default assumption; I don't treat it as "oh look I get a cookie" or anything. I do see it as an indication that I'm managing to be the kind of person I want to be, to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

But dammit, I really wish it wasn't like this.

[friode.livejournal.com]

Is culture the reason people fail to respect other people's boundaries at times? I somehow suspect there are other factors at play in at least some cases.

[kiya]

It's not that simple (and you're not even saying that it's simple; it's not even as simple as that).

What I tend to take away from 'men are dangerous' is "And therefore it's your own stupid fault you were sexually assaulted, you should have known better."

It does not help that my own mother was so blase about the prospect that I might have been raped that she not only didn't ask me if I was all right when she thought it had happened, but the first time I tried to talk about it she responded with a shrug and a, "I figured he forced himself on you." Just another everyday occurence.

That's the message I get from it: rape is normal. If it happens to you it's because you didn't take proper precautions. You should have known men are just like that.

(The victim-blaming self-hatred shit around rape and sexual assault? I managed to pick up rather a lot of that.)

Took me eight years to get the emotional space to believe it was okay to admit to having been messed up by the assault; nine years after that, and I still haven't genuinely shaken the conviction that it was basically my fault. Because men are dangerous. I should have known better.

Y'know?

[angstnokami.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's one of those things wherein we have to specify the intent first? As in, "Now, I'm about to give this example to facilitate conversation, and I'd rather avoid expressions of sympathy that detract from that conversation..."

I consider it safe to assume that you are displeased.

That's also a very good way of putting it.

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

I think... we have to be able to distinguish between Support Conversations and Theory Conversations and Policy Conversations.

For instance, a Scenario:

Boy and Girl are hanging out. They end up somewhere private. Boy makes a move; Girl doesn't respond clearly; Boy has sex with Girl, who doesn't say no.

Boy figures he had sex with a cold fish.
Girl figures she was raped; she was too afraid to turn him down clearly when he made the move, and she shut down when he started to have sex with her, and could not respond.

If I'm in a support conversation with Girl, then I figure if she feels raped, she was raped; the important bit about people taking psych damage is that it's all about their own perceptions.

If I'm in a theory conversation, then I'm interested in the fact that Girl was raped -- she didn't consent to the sex -- but Boy didn't know he was raping her. Isn't that interesting? I think that's really interesting, and I wish the conversation could make a space with this. You can rape someone and not know it. Wow. Bring this up in a dynamic forum and watch the condemnation rain down on your head... people *suck* at thinking theoretically about rape, like they can't think theoretically about terrorism or child porn, as if understanding it would be condemning it. But you've also got questions here about "what if both people are impaired?" and "what should a person's level of responsibility be around sex?" and "how can we help all the different kinds of sexualities determine and communicate consent, because most people just are not ready for Enthusiastic Consent or any of the other theoretical constructs."

If I'm in a policy conversation, then I'm interested in what society should do about rape, whether by constructing laws or inducements or education. Here is where generalizations are absolutely necessary; you don't make policy for individuals. I'd be trying to change assumptions and challenge sexism, and I will pretty much not give a rat's ass about Poor Men Who Would Never Rape (although I am very, very sympathetic to Men Who Are Raped; I think policy needs to address this population, and that the numbers are probably way higher than we know.)

So, I guess... I'd want to know what conversation I'm having, so I know how to respond to disclosures. I think people are not good at figuring out what conversation they're having, and that some disclosures tend to make everyone shift into a Support conversation. After all, for you it's old news, but for them it's the first time they heard; it's a fresh shock. Ideally, you could calmly accept condolences and then move back onto the topic. Maybe there's some communication tricks where you can give the audience a moment to respond and then guide everyone back to the real point, before they get derailed into a litany of suffering and sympathy?

I dunno. I do know that, while my personal story is not like your story, people do react way more strongly than I would have expected. I'm also only recently discovering the goodness that comes with discussing it; I hadn't really talked about it, because it seemed like it was long ago, not that big a deal, and didn't really matter. Now I see echoes of it and have talked about it a bit, and it's helped. So I think it would be fantastic if we could find ways to welcome peoples' stories without making it into A Big Deal.

It is A Big Deal. It also is just a fact of life for millions of people; and in fact, it almost has to become Not A Big Deal, so that it doesn't control a person's life.

(and yes, the terminology is "survivor", and from what I can tell the same peoples' experiences are consistently left out of the conversation, and yes at least part of that is because it seems like the only people who bring them up in non-trivial ways are trolls of one sort of another.)

[cshiley.livejournal.com]

over the char limit!

(digression: I would like education to expand into Teaching Women About Their Bodies, in addition to all the Sex For Men: How Not To Rape education. If women know it shouldn't hurt, and if women know how to make sex good, I think they'll be more in touch with themselves and able to communicate consent better. This is often called Victim Blaming, and that annoys me. How Not To Rape is incredibly important education and we should all take the class. But we should also take Clear Communication And Assertiveness Training. I think a lot of rape is the Clueless Asshole kind; where people aren't responsive, people are trained that nonresponsive is normal, and don't know they're raping when someone's not responding. I think a lot of assholes are more likely to stop if the victim is screaming "stop raping me!" although, of course, a lot aren't. mumble mumble, can't address rape without addressing rape culture; can't address rape culture just by addressing one gender; mumble, mumble grr.)

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

... well, the reason I'd want to know if a person I knew/spent any amount of time around had committed rape/attempted rape/sexual assault is not just so I could break off connections with the person, ostracize them, or even express disapproval; it is so I could never be alone in a room with them again. Telling people about it when you know someone to be dangerous helps keep everybody safe.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I had genuinely not considered this reason, which now feels incredibly obvious, and I am glad I made this post if for no other reason than this realization. I need to sit long and hard and figure out if this changes my mental math. Dammit, and thank you.

[iainuki.livejournal.com]

The idea that considering men dangerous or as potential rapists first is bad. I really want to agree, but I have a lot of difficulty doing so.

I'd argue it is sexism (because it's judging all members of a gender as a group, not as individuals), but a necessary evil nonetheless in our place and time? Maybe in the future some context will change, whether its human biology or pervasive surveillance or VR pornography (yes, crazy suggestions), but for now I don't see a way around it. It's really a subset of the caution that I think everyone should have about men and their potential for violence, male and female, it's just because most men are heterosexual, women need to pay special attention to the risks of sexual violence. It doesn't make me happy, but I don't know how to change it.

On the other hand, I think the sexism surrounding men and rape, the dismissive attitude of society towards men as victims of rape, is entirely unnecessary. Sexism most often cuts against women, but that's one definite way it hurts men.

[kiya]

I think, like I said back when that post was making the rounds, that the necessary first step is for people to talk about their experiences. To be able to do that, to open up and say what happened, in their own terms, on their own terms. The people whose rapes were in keeping with the social narratives of rape; the people whose rapes were not. The people whose emotional responses were in keeping with the social narratives of response; the people whose emotional responses were not.

There was a meme that went around back when I was fairly new on LJ, called "No pity, no shame, no silence." In response to that, I wrote down my assault experiences in detail for the first time; I'd talked around it before, but there I laid out what happened, in detail, as precisely as I could do it. And there was a huge number of people who did basically the same thing - ranging from violent rape through to 'yeah, it was technically rape, but whatever' - and it was impossible to read through all this and say there is one true narrative of the rape experience.

I think the asynchronisity of the internet helps with that one; nobody was talking over anyone else, everyone had their space for it. It was also spontaneous - not a "Let's all tell our stories" but one person, then another, all these people cascading into this giant expression of reality and stunning all those people who didn't know, who weren't aware that all this was out there, who could now be aware of the fact that this was only the people who were able to speak up and tell their stories.

I don't know what the next step is after that. I'm pretty sure that's the first step, though - to make it so that this stuff can be said. All the stories. Without the people telling the stories getting stamped with the RAPE VICTIM stamp and sent off into the purgatorio of never-listened-to-again-except-to-tell-a-sob-story.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I don't know what the next step is after that. I'm pretty sure that's the first step, though - to make it so that this stuff can be said. All the stories. Without the people telling the stories getting stamped with the RAPE VICTIM stamp and sent off into the purgatorio of never-listened-to-again-except-to-tell-a-sob-story.

Yeah I've got to admit I'm terrified of this: No longer being taken seriously because I've shared my emotions. It's not just here, either, though this is one of the big places; I feel like I have to keep them in check and keep things in intellect, in theory (which I'm very good at doing) in order to have a conversation where people actually listen to me. Sometimes it's good for me, but I wish it didn't feel like it had to be all the time.

[inkmark.livejournal.com]

These are all very good points, and rather than come up with a coherent essay response (which would require more brain power than I have right now; blame baking), I'll respond to a few points that really jumped out at me.

So, given this, how do we talk about rape? How can we normalize these conversations so that we can be comfortable and make real progress? How can those of us with experiences share our experiences without centering them and without denying the trauma they contain? How can those of us without experiences express our opinions and participate in the conversation? How can we silence no one?

I think that's asking a lot of survivors, don't you think? If we're just exchanging facts and getting people up to speed, that's one thing, but to have a conversation and dialogue ideally entails an ability to consider alternate points of view, a willingness to be wrong, an ability to not let differing opinions generate anger or distress, and a degree of adeptness with the material being discussed. For many reasons owing to the trauma experienced, I wouldn't assume or expect an individual survivor to be ready to do some of these. If they're in a really angry spot in relation to their trauma, I wouldn't expect them to be in a place to calmly discuss mitigating factors in rape, for example. It's not my call to expect that of survivors; it's a factor of their healing and coming to terms, and that is a life long process. It certainly is for me.

I wasn't trying to win the argument, I was trying to relate to the issue the only way I know how, as someone with personal experience. At best when this has happened I've felt like the thread of conversation got lost in people tripping over themselves to make sure I knew they thought what happened to me was terrible; at worst I've felt like I accidentally used "I've been raped" as a thought-terminating cliche, winning an irrelevant argument, and felt guilty about bringing it up at all.

Yeah, that's pretty much why I don't bring up my experience at all. :) A similar thing happens when I bring my speech disorder into a discussion; they don't apologize for me having to live with it, but it does put a pall on the discussion, like I simultaneously played a trump card and a sympathy card unexpectedly and inappropriately. It's quite annoying, and oddly silencing; in the past, it was even shaming.

Having been on the other side, though, it's not just about the person who says it. It's also about the other people in the conversation. No one wants to be the person who doesn't have sympathy for the rape victim, you know? For example, you may be ok and even appreciative that I didn't try to apologize but instead carried onward with the conversation; but the other people listening certainly will wonder why. That's not to excuse the act or diminish or dismiss other facets, but just to bring to light another facet of the situation.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I think it's important for survivors to have a place to center our experiences and the trauma they've caused us. For my part, at least, I would also really like places where I can (and am pushed to by conversational structure) consider alternate points of view, be wrong, and try not to get upset about differing opinions. For me, it's both a trying-to-make-things-better-by-having-conversations thing and a healing thing --- one way I deal with very difficult situations is to intellectualize them, and the way discourse around rape works has made that very hard for me. I don't expect this of anyone, but I also expect I'm not the only person who would like it.

Having been on the other side, though, it's not just about the person who says it. It's also about the other people in the conversation. No one wants to be the person who doesn't have sympathy for the rape victim, you know?

This is a really good point, but one that I don't know how to address, because it feels awkward to have an obligation to frame things properly, as the person making the disclosure. It's also uncomfortable to feel like the sympathy might actually not be about me but about seeming sympathetic? I understand that it's complicated but I have difficulty engaging with it emotionally from where I sit.

Second part:

[inkmark.livejournal.com]

So shouldn't I be glad that this conversation didn't apply to all of my assault experiences, not angry at being excluded? Isn't it important to have these conversations that happen in broad sweeping gendered terms, even if they leave some people or experiences out? (I think part of the problem with that is that the same people get left out, time and time again, but I don't have a good solution for that, or even know if it's true.)

Well, cereta's post sort of assumed male on female rape was the major issue that needed to be discussed. She was targetting it as a female to her male readers and friends, so I can see why she'd make the assumption, but it's still there, and it's still silencing and distancing. When we discuss these issues, it isn't like physics or engineering where we can consider a gluon or a cog apart from the whole; it's like biology, where even if we discuss a muscle apart from the body, that body is still there, implicit and necessary to understanding the muscle. And just as a discussion of that muscle would have to mention the other muscles near it or related to it, the bones it attaches to, the nerves and blood vessels and use and overuse of it in relation to other bodily functions and actions, so should a discussion centered around male on female rape at least give tacit acknowledgement that it's not the only kind of rape, just that they're choosing to focus on this kind in that post. This can be done either in the post, or though responses in the comments. Maybe she thought her blog and prior posts were acknowledgement enough?

That didn't really come out as clearly as I thought it would... let me know if you want me to restate it.

Also: Thank you for having this discussion. :)

Re: Second part:

[rax.livejournal.com]

Maybe she thought her blog and prior posts were acknowledgement enough?

I think part of the problem is that the many, many people sent links to her post (including me) did not have that context, and with thousands of looming comments, were unlikely to go read more. :) This isn't her fault, but I didn't read any more of her blog until yesterday, and I originally saw it quite a while ago.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I really just... don't talk about rape.

The culture around talking about it feels like it's full of assumptions as to who is "allowed" to talk about it, and it includes people who sound like their feminist discourse could slip into saying I'm not a woman (and thus not allowed to talk about anything "feminine" let alone rape) because of the trans thing. I have enough lingering issues about my own femininity that I just don't want to go wading into something like that. Not with people who sometimes seem to have ended up with "I was raped" being a huge part of their identity in a way that seems terribly counterproductive. (On the other hand it took me about fifteen years to recover from the trauma of my father's unexpected death on my twelfth birthday; some stuff can take a loooong time to process and not everyone does their processing in as involuted a manner as I did...)

Also, you are the first person I know who has ever said "I have been raped", and I get the sense that you're at a point where you've mostly processed it. A few people I know have told me about sexual encounters that could probably be labeled "rape", but they did not couch it in that term - instead, it was stories of Really Bad And Regrettable Sex with Regrettable People who they'd really rather not ever interact with again. With a power imbalance involved. I have simply not had a reason to have a conversation about it with anyone I'm actually already talking with, nor any reason to get involved in a conversation (argument) with a stranger!

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Well, there was the one time I had some lazy sunny morning thoughts about the recurrence of "rape" in the titles of various classical paintings, and posted some half-formed thoughts to LJ about some images that would poke at that theme. The flames I got made me take the post private, and decide that yes, these images would generate a hell of a lot of discussion if I actually did them... and that this was not a subject I really felt like I wanted to fight to be allowed to explore, not when I only have so much time and have some big ideas that I'm much more drawn to. I'd much rather do something that makes people happy to look at.

[seth99rb.livejournal.com]

in a sense, rape is already normalized. look at how much it is portrayed on TV and how natural is it to watch these shows without realizing the reality of the portrayal.

also, most of us have been raped, or raped someone, so again, very normal in our everyday lives.

then again, why should we try to normalize rape? normalizing the conversation about it, maybe, but not the act itself certainly.

your definition is pretty much the definition used in court cases and whatnot according to the womens studies class i took.

i dont think these conversations should ever not center the person sharing. when someone shares a rape experience, they should welcome and expect concern and a more centered conversation. otherwise they should not mention themselves as the so called "victim" of the experience. one can share personal experiences without making them personal, especially if one or more of the people involved are friends of friends etc.

if someone raped you, and it was not out of context, then that person should be brought to some form of justice. whether that justice is merely you coming to terms with that relationship and understanding how to get out of it, or you bringing them to court, or you moving away, then so be it. but right and wrong and justice and injustice may mean different things to different people. as you say, you are not interested in really bringing up the name of the person or forging an army against them, someone else might not be satisfied or able to live their life if they don't take that kind of action.

a way to speak about rape in a public or at least conversational setting is certainly possible. i talk about it all of the time with people, trying to teach with what i have learned from experiences and classes. generally i will speak of tv shows and move my way to specific facts about people in our community and cities. this way i dont have to talk about myself or my experiences, but can still move from general to specific and get listeners and friends involved in the conversation without feeling pressured to uncover their own rapists.

im scared to go out alone at night because i get harrassed and hit on in broad daylight every day at my job in a department store, without light and security its only easier. do i look at all men and expect harrassment? no, or else i wouldnt be able to function at my job or in life in general. i am just careful of any stranger that i meet or speak too outside of a controlled situation. i think thats really all i can do. or anyone really.

i think same-sex rape and rape committed by women is much more common when u think of rape more broadly. whats i mean is when the definition of rape constitutes sexual assault rather than merely penetration. and this occurs all over by any gender, any orientation, or any particular relationship type. we see it within families, gay circles, straight circles, whatever. it doesnt matter but its not the perpetuated norm because of the dislike of the non straight man=power woman=weak relationship. derailing? no. just not as well known or thought about.

[rax.livejournal.com]

then again, why should we try to normalize rape? normalizing the conversation about it, maybe, but not the act itself certainly.

I guess that's what I meant; I'd like to be able to talk about my own experiences without having that be a sudden conversational shift. I like what you said about moving from the general to the specific; I wonder if there's a way to do that and use my own experiences when they're the evidence I have, without getting the shift in focus I don't want?

i dont think these conversations should ever not center the person sharing. when someone shares a rape experience, they should welcome and expect concern and a more centered conversation. otherwise they should not mention themselves as the so called "victim" of the experience.

I disagree with this; I think maybe I should expect it, on the grounds that it's what's likely to happen, but I don't feel like I should be obliged to welcome that sort of treatment in order to speak up.

[laura47.livejournal.com]

...and many years ago, you made a sandwich? [/cryptic to other people]

it's weird, at this point i can't really remember how i reacted back then. Now I totally take my cues from you. not that it comes up much.

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

First of all, thank you for this post, and you are brave for making it.

A small number of people came up with things like "What about men raped by women, or same-sex rape? Where does that fit into this?" To which the answer was "That doesn't fit into the topic of this post," with a side of "You're derailing." Now, a couple of those posters actually were derailing, but is the idea derailing? I don't know. Having been raped by a woman, and raped while not everyone around me considered me a woman, I feel left behind by this argument, actively pushed out of the conversation. At the same time, I just said above that I wanted there to be room for serious conversations about specific elements of rape issues that weren't focused on my experience. So shouldn't I be glad that this conversation didn't apply to all of my assault experiences, not angry at being excluded? Isn't it important to have these conversations that happen in broad sweeping gendered terms, even if they leave some people or experiences out? (I think part of the problem with that is that the same people get left out, time and time again, but I don't have a good solution for that, or even know if it's true.)

I think that is exactly the problem- the same people left out again and again, and by default. So that if someone whose experience is not that of a heterosexual cis-woman having been raped by a heterosexual cis-man wants to have a conversation about his/her/hir experiences, he/she/ze has to have it in a separate "conversation about rape of people like me in circumstances like mine" space, away from "normal" conversations about rape which involve straight cis-men raping straight cis-women. And that's othering, it's heteronormative and cis-privileged, and it overlooks the similarities of experience in favor of the differences. And sometimes it's those similarities which need to be discussed, so people become more aware of what really goes on and how it's not just a straight cis-men and straight cis-women phenomenon.

So while some people saying these things is derailing (such as "But women rape men too!" as a way of shifting the blame to women "equally" in a conversation about men raping women), not all instances of mentioning non-"default assumption" rape is derailing. Sometimes it's very necessary to keep the conversation honest, to keep participants from leaving people out, and discrediting their traumas, and making it harder for them to heal because they're being silenced from the rape discussion spaces as well as out in the general world.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Thank you for expanding on that, I was hoping someone had thought about it more than me and would have a considered take on it. I think you're right, and it's something that often makes me feel like I should squeeze my stories a little bit to fit into that narrative, because I can. I think I should work more against that tendency.

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

I'm most immidiately offended by cereta's repeated use of the acronym ETA.

[kelkyag]

I have no answers, but I am listening, and also interested in finding some.

I think cshiley is right that there multiple conversations to be had about rape. In a context like livejournal, it seems appropriate to start off saying that one is currently interested in one of those conversations, or some aspect of one of them, if that is known, and perhaps to branch of threads or encourage others to do so as there is interest. The harder problem, I think, is managing the scope of a conversation that wasn't opened with such boundaries -- one needs a polite/acceptable/firm way to say "this is outside the scope of this discussion (but might be of interest over there in that discussion)", and for participants to respect that. (But then, lack of respect is part of the topic ...)

[sethg]

I think one reason it's hard to have a "normal" conversation about rape is that the norms surrounding rape are still up in the air. So if there's a discussion of someone's personal experience with rape, that larger controversy casts a pall over the conversation.

I mean, if I tell people about my house being broken into and I mention that we have conventional door locks--the kind that an MIT alum with a little spring steel could pick in about thirty seconds--I don't think many people would tell me "not to excuse what the burglar did, which of course was a crime, but dude, you should have had better locks".

"Men are potential rapists" is badly phrased, I think, but true in the sense that "cars have the potential to crash" and "buildings have the potential to burn while occupied" are true, and I can't think of a better concise phrasing right now.

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

I can. "People are potential rapists."

A Few Thoughts

[eredien]

Random thought (mostly theoretical): is it considered derailing to move the conversation away from "rape culture surrounding cis women and men" because it's genuinely derailing from a topic, or is it more that the spaces where discussion of rape happens are not yet inclusive/broad enough?

I can see where it sometimes genuinely might be derailing if that's the only thing you want to talk about, but I think it's hard to talk about cis rape culture without also noticing that cis rape culture by necessity influences non-cis rape culture. Is noticing it common, but talking about how you noticed it, really derailing?

So, given this, how do we talk about rape? How can we normalize these conversations so that we can be comfortable and make real progress? How can those of us with experiences share our experiences without centering them and without denying the trauma they contain? How can those of us without experiences express our opinions and participate in the conversation? How can we silence no one?

Here are some of my thoughts; it may be helpful to reference the discussion above regarding sympathy and why people don't want to be the asshole who doesn't express it.

As someone who doesn't think she's been raped, it's really hard for me to participate in discussions about rape. I feel like there are a few set responses that people without rape experiences feel both able and allowed to express in the context of a discussion about rape, especially a discussion where personal experiences of those who have been raped are shared. Here are some I've noticed:

The "sympathy" responses:
- Expressing sympathy to the rape victim
- Expressing anger, about rape or about the social/cultural situations that lead to it.
- Expressing indignation.
- Expressing disbelief (this one is less awesome, but I imagine that assault victims get this all the time: "but you're so with it! How are you not a mess on the floor? You must be really strong.")

The "I don't have experience, but I have thought about this" responses (now that I think about this, I think this could be another way of expressing sympathy, by showing others you've thought about an issue and it's affected you, even if you haven't been a victim):
- The "dry statistics" approach
- The emotional "what does this tell us about problems in the larger culture" approach (which I am guilty of above in my comment to lilarien).

The "guilt" responses:
- "I haven't had this experience/read enough books/have the 'wrong' genetalia, so I can add nothing substantial to this conversation; I will just read and not say anything and hope people don't notice I'm not participating and don't take that as a sign that I think rape is ok."
- "I feel guilty about never having had an experience that has shaped the lives of so many people around me and all over the world, even though I know I never want that experience."
- "I find it hard to talk about this because I once had my head in a place where I seriously considered raping someone because I was really confused about what they wanted, sexually and emotionally, from me. I talked myself down from it, but was angry and confused for months afterward."
- Or, even more strongly: "I have no place in this conversation because I'm a rapist."

These aren't all of them; this is just what I thought of last night and this morning; I hope it is a somewhat representative sample.

I feel like conversation around rape often (intentionally or un-intentionally) not only shuts out those who have been raped but don't fit into the model under discussion, but also shuts out those who haven't been raped, except for that set of proscribed, unhelpful roles.

How can those of us who haven't been assaulted break out of those roles and offer genuine sympathy but also do genuine work to end rape alongside those who have been raped? I don't know.

Thanks for this post, R.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Hi. This is a really interesting and thought-provoking entry, and has led to really interesting and thought-provoking discussion! I hope to respond more to what you said and what other people have said, but in the mean-time I have jumped off of part of it (the thing about ostracizing people) and made this post (http://gaudior.livejournal.com/281141.html) about it.

Hope to be back soon to say more.

<3, R.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Now revised to say more of what I actually meant.

[q10.livejournal.com]

although each particular case is different, and although it puts unfair pressure on victims (for lack of a better word) to demand that they speak up, i think there's a lot to be said for trying to establish a norm that accusations should be made, and made in public. besides the safety issues raised by rushthatspeaks, such a norm can have a lot of other benefits, in particular:

-it benefits people who might be unpleasant or have distasteful attitudes about sex, or who just happen to hit it off badly with somebody else, but who have not in fact raped anybody. as it stands, every time somebody i know expresses strong-bug-vague distaste for a mutual acquaintance, i'm left wondering (especially if the gender breakdown fits with the standard pattern). i can't imagine i'm the only person who has this reaction. this means that a lot of people end up going through a lot of social interactions with the stigma of being vaguely-suspected rapists, including a lot of actual rapists, but also a lot of people who are basically blameless, but happen not to get along with the wrong people.

-it often benefits the falsely accused. it's true that maliciously false rape accusations are rare (although they're not wholly unheard of, and false accusations based on errors of identification are more common), but this is still not to be underestimated. specific accusations can be met and denied, and conrary evidence can be presented. a vague word that's been put around that so-and-so is kinda sketchy can be much harder to refute.

of course, the fact that such a norm would be desirable doesn't say much about what any individual person should do in the world as it is today, but this point still seemed worth getting out there.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I'm concerned about what having to defend accusations would be like for survivors. I don't think I would have been equipped to do so in most of the cases where I would have wanted to. Even now there's one case where I would just not find it worth it to me to have it out publically, because the person in question denies everything and trying to talk about it with them is almost as bad as the rape itself. I understand that when an accusation is leveled at a specific person in public, there needs to be a higher barrier to believe that it's true, in some sense; on the other hand this makes me reallllllly go twitch twitch twitch. I guess it would be great to have that be the norm in some ways, but I think I'm inclined to prioritize not putting further pressure on people who just got raped.

I learn something new every day.

[rathdei.livejournal.com]

I had a giant comment posted and livejournal ate it. Om nom nom.

Basically, I wanted to quote your statement about how your friend felt. "After a while, I understood that it wasn't just about my experience --- it was also about her anxiety and her anger that someone could hurt me like that, and feeling of powerlessness in the face of horrible things happening to people she cared about." Because. Yea. I'm your brother. Although I imagine that this reaction is what everyone close to you is going to have given the circumstances.

As far as meaningful "conversations" about rape and the culture, I was citing my fraternity as an example, both good and bad, in kind of response to cetera's post up there. There are things that happened and things I stopped from happening, but in far more places out of my area of control people let these things continue to occur, use free alcohol as a lure for underaged women (under 21, that is), and perpetuate that culture of straight males using straight females for... you know all that stuff they say happens in frat houses. Because it does. Even in my own, I'm sad to say, and I imagine that it will happen even more now that I and those I respected to help me are no longer there. It was impossible for me to speak directly to the people involved, as they didn't even believe they were doing anything wrong. I'll speak more about this if you want, but I need to cut this short. sorry if I'm not really hitting the topic in consideration, just wanted to share my feelings

Re: I learn something new every day.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I'd love to hear your perspective on this --- it's radically different from mine and that of most of my friends, and I respect your opinion and thoughts. That said, you should only share if you feel comfortable doing so.

[capsicumanuum.livejournal.com]

I've really got nothing intelligent to say on the subject, although I do wish there was more clarity at the start of a conversation as to what kind of conversation the originator wanted it to be.

I was at the WisCon Rape Panel that prompted a lot of the discussion that immediately preceeded Cereta's post, and a huge part of why that panel turned out to be made of pure fail was that most of the audience, and most of the panelists, came in expecting a Theory Discussion. And then all of a sudden, bam!, the moderator decided to make it a Support Discussion. And then one disclosure after another started pouring forth, and then some men tried to disclose and were silenced and yeah. Thinking about it still makes me twitch, and a lot of the secondary trauma that a lot of attendees experienced could have been avoided if there had been more clarity and guidelines up front as to what to expect.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I did not have any of that context, thank you for sharing it. (Also, men tried to disclose and were silenced? Seriously? Ugh.)

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

I regret speaking without for-serious content, but I speak to support the idea that silence and shame are very problematic narratives, that substituting in gradually more sane narratives about rape is good, to support the survivors who find themselves obliged to speak, to support active use of framing so that conversations can actually move with minimal trouble from Theory to Support to Other and back.

Very educational thread.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

Every time I come back to this my thoughts end up traveling along Foucauldian lines, thinking in terms of power and collective strategy, so I guess I'll just go with it.

There are certain acts or things very significant within a society, which are paradoxically significant in such a way as to make discussion of them and reaction to them very difficult: race and rape, and to a lesser extent nudity and (healthy) sexuality, are examples. On a personal level, the prevailing silence on these topics relegates most discussion of them to extraordinary, often emotionally charged, situations. So a person's instinctive (and reasonable) response to the topic will be to anticipate that emotional charge, and change their words accordingly, whether or not it's actually present. A certain fearful uncertainty (you realize you probably do not know who among your friends has been raped, and who is a rapist) contributes to the difficulty of holding a discussion. On a collective level, the undiscussed act or fact strengthens some power relation, while at the same time allowing that relation to benefit from a contradictory explanation for itself -- in this case, the pertinent explanation for sexism would be something like "Men should protect women." So the fact becomes undiscussable, allowing a power relation to benefit both from an unspoken act and from a contradictory rationalization.

More generally, I think shame and blame (which not coincidentally appear in discussions of rape, or race, which seems the topic most comparable) have the collective result of allowing some large-scale asymmetry to be sustained both by an irrational, unspeakable act/fact and by contradictory rationalizations. And whatever the worth of shame and blame to individuals, the paradoxical nature of the concepts thereof damage attempts to discuss the unspeakable, and thereby hinder attempts to challenge the rationalizations of power with the reality of power: discussions of rape and race that turn to the topic of blame, say, are more likely to be circular and unproductive.

As for how to actually discuss rape: I dunno. A silence resulting from a prevailing irrationality of society can only be countered by extraordinary reasonableness, whether on the part of a group able to discuss the topic or an individual able to weather the inevitable deflections and confusions. Because that reasonableness is extraordinary, there's no easy way to acquire it. Anyway, pardon the tangential nature of my response.