no means no

 

definition of rape

 

What is the current definition of rape in law?

The Sexual Offences Act 2003 (the Act) came into force on the 1 May 2004. It repealed almost all of the existing statute law in relation to sexual offences. The purpose of the Act is to strengthen and modernise the law on sexual offences, whilst improving preventative measures and the protection of individuals from sexual offenders.

Under section 1(1) SOA 2003 a defendant, A, is guilty of rape if:

_ A intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of B (the complainant) with his penis;

_ B does not consent to the penetration; and,

_ A does not reasonably believe that B consents.

The new offence of rape in section 1(1) SOA 2003 includes oral and anal penetration with a penis. This is a change from the previous law which was only concerned with vaginal penetration and used other offences to criminalise these forms of sexual violence (such as indecent assault). The person who commits the offence of rape must be a man (as the penetration has to be with a penis). However, both women and men may experience rape. If the penetration is with something other than a penis then the offence is assault by penetration

For the offence of rape to have been committed the defendant must have penetrated you without your consent, or continued to penetrate you after you withdrew your consent, and the defendant must not have reasonably believed that you were consenting.

It is not relevant what relationship, if any, a defendant has or had with you. Nor is it relevant if the act complained of occurred within a relationship. If the defendant intentionally penetrates with his penis the vagina, anus or mouth of the complainant without her consent where he does not reasonably believe in her consent the defendant has committed rape.

 

What is the definition of consent?

The Act has three important provisions relating to consent. They are:

• A statutory definition of consent
• The test of reasonable belief in consent
• The evidential and conclusive presumptions about consent and the defendant's belief in consent

Section 74 defines consent as "if she agrees by choice, and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice" . In the offences of rape, assault by penetration, sexual assault and causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent, a person (A) is guilty of an offence if (s)he:

• Acts intentionally;
• (B) does not consent to the act; and
• does not reasonably believe that B consents.

Deciding whether a belief is reasonable is to be determined having regard to all the circumstances, including any steps A has taken to ascertain whether B consents (subsection (2) of sections 1-4). It is likely that this will include a defendant's attributes, such as disability or extreme youth. This is a major change in the law and the Act abolishes the Morgan defence of a genuine though unreasonably mistaken belief as to the consent of the complainant. It means that the defendant (A) has the responsibility to ensure that (B) consents to the sexual activity at the time in question. It will be important for the police to ask the offender in interview what steps he took to satisfy him that the complainant consented.

 

 

 

common myths about rape

 

Here are some of the most common myths that surround rape and sexual assault:

 

Myth Do not go out alone at any time. Women are most likely to be raped outside, in dark alleyways late at night. This is the best way for a woman to protect herself.

Fact The suggestion of avoiding walking alone, especially at night is a common suggestion to avoiding sexual assault. However, only 9% of rapes are committed by 'strangers'. Women are raped in their homes and in their work places where they are less likely to be believed and even less likely to report. This myth can control movements and restricts freedom. This can feel like women are living under a 'curfew' and that it is a woman's responsibility to be either in or out at certain times. More than 80% of rapes are committed by known men.

 

Myth Women who are sexually assaulted 'ask for it' by the way they dress or act, rape only happens to young women.

Fact Many women are led to believe that if they are not part of a certain category of women then they are 'safe' from being raped. Women and girls of all ages, classes, culture, ability, sexuality, race and faith are raped. Attractiveness has little significance. Reports show that there is a great diversity in the way targeted women act or dress. Rapists choose women based on their vulnerability not their physical appearance.

Sometimes women see themselves as 'unworthy' or 'undesirable' because of their age or physical appearance and therefore 'safe' from rape. Some men joke or make comments about women's appearances or age to indicate whether she is sexually desirable or available, or as part of their defence in court, saying he thought 'he was doing her a favour', using her appearance or age. Women are raped from the age of three to ninety three. Rape is an act of violence not sex.

 

truth: men are responsible for whether they rape or not

Myth Everyone knows when a woman says no, she often means yes. Women secretly want to be raped.

Fact Rape is a terrifying, violent and humiliating experience that no woman wants or asks for. Legally a person has the right to change their mind about having sex at any point of sexual contact. If a sexual partner does not stop at the time a person says no, this is sexual assault. If a person is in a relationship with someone or has had sex with a person before, this does not mean that they cannot be assaulted by that person. Consent must be given every time two people engage in sexual contact. Sex without consent is rape.

 

Myth The women was drunk / took drugs / had a bad reputation / was hitch hiking / wore tight clothes / seduced him / probably got what she was asking for.

Fact If a person is unconscious or their judgement is impaired by alcohol or drugs, legally they are unable to give consent. Having non-consensual sex with a person who is intoxicated is sexual assault.

Rapists use a variety of excuses to attempt to discredit the women they rape and to justify their crime. No woman asks or deserves to be rape or sexually assaulted. Often a rape case is defined more by the woman's character than by what has happened to her. Newspapers and mass media often refer to women in the roles that they have within society - 'young mother', 'grandmother', 'doctor's wife' etc. If the woman's role or social position is not seen as socially acceptable, she is often held responsible not the rapist. For example, the original 'Jack the Ripper' and Sutcliffe in the late 70's and 80's were glorified by the press. (Jack the ripper has his books, museum, cocktails, computer games and even tourist walks in London named after him where you can visit the places women were murdered!)

The rules imposed on women's behaviour allow rapists to shift the responsibility for rape onto women wherever possible, so that most of the perpetrators who rape are seen as victims of malicious allegations, carelessness or stupidity. There is no other crime in which so much effort is expended to make the victim appear responsible - imagine the character or financial background of a robbery victim being questioned in court.

Myth Women eventually relax and enjoy it. They secretly want to be raped

Fact There is a widely held belief that women enjoy rape or that it is 'just sex at the wrong time, in the wrong place'. Rape is a crime of sexual violence and humiliation which can involve being beaten, physical restraint, the use of knifes and sticks, urination and defecating. Studies have consistently shown that most rapes involve physical force to some degree. Often when a woman is raped she is afraid that she will be killed - rapists often use the threat of killing a woman or her children to ensure her 'submission' and her silence after the attack. Women do not enjoy sexual violence. Victims of murder, robbery and other crimes are never portrayed as enjoying the experience.

Myth The woman did not get hurt or fight back. It could not have been rape.

Fact Men who rape or sexually assault women and girls will often use weapons or threats of violence to intimidate women. The fact that there is no visible evidence of violence does not mean that a woman has not been raped.

Another myth that goes hand in hand with this is that ' rape is a fate worse than death' and this links with the belief that women should fight and resist throughout. Faced with the reality of rape, women make second by second decisions, all of which are directed at minimising the harm done to them. At the point where initial resistance, struggling, reasoning etc have failed, the fear of further violence often limits women's resistance. The only form of control that seems available to women at this point is limiting the harm done to them.

truth: men who rape lie about it

Myth Men of certain races and backgrounds are more likely to commit sexual violence.

Fact There is no typical rapist. Studies show that men who commit sexual violence come from every economic, ethnic, racial, age and social group. 85% of rapists are men known to their victims.

Myth Men who rape or sexually assault are mentally ill or monsters.

Fact Studies have indicated that as few as 5% of men are psychotic at the time of their crimes. Few convicted rapists are referred for psychiatric treatment.

Myth The man was drunk / on drugs / depressed / under stress / wasn't himself.

Fact Men use a variety of excuses to justify the act of rape. There is never an excuse.

 

Myth Once a man is sexually aroused he cannot help himself. He has to have sex.

Fact Studies show that most rapes are premeditated i.e. they are either wholly or partially planned in advance. All rapes committed by more than one assailant are always planned. Men can quite easily control their urges to have sex - they do not need to rape a woman to satisfy them. Rape is an act of violence - not sexual gratification. Men who rape or sexually assault does so to dominate, violate and control.

Myth Men who rape are sexually frustrated / do not have the opportunity to have sex with a willing partner.

Fact Men who rape are as likely as any other man to be cohabiting or having a significant relationship with a woman. More than one in five women are raped by their partners or their husbands. Women who work as prostitutes or in the sex industry are usually dismissed as rape victims because of bias by the police, criminal justice system, juries and society in general.

 

Myth Women make up stories about being raped. .

Fact Reporting to the police can be a difficult decision. There are many myths that underlie the belief that women make false and malicious allegations of rape against innocent men. Studies show however, that the allegations of rape that are false are exactly the same as that of any other crime i.e. 6 - 8%

 

Myth Women cannot rape other women

Fact Only a man can commit the offence of Rape [Sec 1 (1) SOA 2003] as the penetration has to be with a penis. However, both women and men may experience rape. If the penetration is with something other than a penis, then the offence is assault by penetration.

The majority of sexual assaults are committed by men against women, but anyone can be sexually assaulted and emotional, physical and sexual abuse does happen in same sex relationships. Often when women are assaulted by other women they fear they will not be believed. It is important to realise that women who are assaulted by other women are able to access support and are believed 

 

 

information taken from http://www.rapecrisis.org.uk/index.php

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

another useful website is http://rasasc.bizview.co.uk/

 

 



who stole the tarts?

This is a post from http://www.thefword.org.uk written by Louise McCudden. She tweets as @LouMcCudden.

Content note: This post mentions rape, violent/rape porn and sexual exploitation and abuse.

 The rejection of slut-shaming and the reclaiming of "slut" to mean "sex positive" is a definite notch on the bedpost (sorry) for feminism. But with it, something dangerous is happening. The sexists have got a bit clever with us. And their tactics are working. They have a new way of guilt-tripping women out of the right to sexual autonomy - and, ironically, they're using our own rejection of slut-shaming to do it. More and more, we're stumbling into a kind of slut-shaming in reverse.

When questions about the ethics of porn and prostitution get dismissed as sex-hate or conservatism, perhaps it's a genuine misunderstanding, but I'm reaching the point where I'm done tiptoeing around those who enjoy hate porn, when they have such little respect for how it makes me feel. Debate after debate gets hijacked by people who claim sex positivity because they fuck a lot or watch porn. This might be tolerable if they didn't bring with it an inability to differentiate between sex positivism, and never saying no.

The cognitive dissonance employed when it comes to sex is enormous. We know sex trafficking is wrong. Yet, Brits go on stag dos abroad in huge numbers and sleep with trafficked women and girls. We know drugged "consent" is neither informed nor enthusiastic. But thousands download drugged women being penetrated, for personal pleasure. We know rape is horrific - but entire genres of porn use it for sexual entertainment. (Personally I think if you're a porn director and can only come up with one way to show sex, you're in the wrong line of work, but that's just me.)

Those who have a clear conscience indulging in any or all of the above largely have our relentlessly hyper-sexualised, sex negative culture to thank for it. Myths have been telling them "it's not rape if..." for years. Even the Justice Secretary thinks "classic rape" is "where someone jumps out from a bush."

Let's get a couple of things straight. Firstly, rape isn't edgy. It's one of the most old-fashioned things in the world. If rape turns you on, that's insulting enough; don't be proud of yourself for it by pretending it makes you an open-minded liberal. It's more likely it makes you a conservative prude who only relates to sex in its most clichéd, non-challenging, non-threatening form.

Secondly, just because an act of violence happens to involve genitals and you like it, that doesn't make it a sex positive thing. If the difference between using your penis to degrade a woman for your own arousal, and two people enjoying sex together for mutual enjoyment, is confusing to you, then it is most definitely not others who have a negative attitude to sex.

Thirdly, consent is not some technicality, and morality is about more than avoiding a prison sentence. If someone lacks the physical ability, or luxury of circumstance, to say no to a sexual activity, how is it a choice when they say yes to it?

Something weird happens to our understanding of freedom when there are orgasms at stake. People who would never celebrate a woman's "choice" to stay in an abusive relationship because of financial dependency, or assume a drugged up person is consenting because they're quiet, refuse to acknowledge that some of the sex workers they use or watch have exactly the same reality of "choice".

It's not just men. I've lost count of the number of women bragging about how liberated they are because they have no moral questions about this. And that helps others get away with calling us anti-choice for making sure people have a choice about their lives; anti-sex for thinking that sex should be fun. Is our culture so sex negative that people genuinely cannot differentiate being anti-violence, and anti-sex?

This may hurt the egos of the self-styled defenders of all things pornographic, but I don't think they're liberals at all. I'm not sure they even like sex much. When you nudge around the edges, they repeatedly show themselves as nothing but regressive conservatives. After all, how else could anyone differentiate so easily between the treatment of women who have sex for money, and the treatment of women who don't?

So nice try, but we're not fooled. It's the virgin-whore dichotomy, where humanity doesn't translate from your mother or sister to a woman who is a sex thing. This celebration of women's right to get donkey punched on drugs is nothing more than telling women when we are allowed to say yes and when we are allowed to say no, then amending the levels of respect we deserve accordingly.

No genuine liberal would shame or guilt women for expressing an opinion about ethical boundaries as sex-haters. They might as well go all out and just call us unnatural or unwomanly. So, sorry if we offend you, but we will keep calling out that cowardly silencing tactic for what it is: boring, puritanical slut-shaming.

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c o n s e n t

An  article on consent by Philippa Willitts for http://www.thefword.org.uk

Jack Tweed and Anthony Davis have been found not guilty of raping a teenage girl.

While this verdict has now been passed, and I therefore cannot suggest that either of them are guilty, I do want to challenge the idea that a woman not saying no means that you are able to just fuck them.

In Davis's testimony, it turns out that; The court heard that in the police interview Mr Davis said he saw his friend having sex with the woman against a window and that "she didn't protest it".

"She didn't say 'stop'. She didn't say anything to suggest she didn't want it to happen," he added. "She didn't say anything at all. I just got closer and closer. She didn't say anything."

It is never ok for a man to presume that he can fuck a woman based on the fact that she is being fucked by someone else, and that when he approaches she doesn't say anything.

Hugo Schwyzer says, “The opposite of rape is not consent. The opposite of rape is enthusiasm”, and there is a lot of truth in that.

Davis went on to say  "If a girl had been assaulted or raped, she would have come out of that room traumatised. "She would have been screaming, surely someone would have heard something."

This is a common misconception, and one which contributes to the low conviction rates of rapists in this country. That rape victims behave in a certain way. If she is not screaming and crying, if she doesn't instantly call the police, then she can't have really been raped.

Women cope in whatever way they can in order to survive. This can include denial and withdrawal as much as anger and seeking justice. There is a lot of shame for rape survivors, and a lot of self-questioning, which can mean that women do not immediately tell people - least of all the police, who don't have a great reputation for sensitivity in these situations - what has happened. This does not mean it did not happen!

aest.org have an article about Rape Trauma Syndrome which outlines and explains some of the many possible reactions that people who have been raped can experience and display.

I can't comment on Tweed and Davis being found not guilty. But I am using some details of their testimony to challenge some commonly-used assumptions about women's reactions to male violence, which apply in many rape cases we see.

http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2010/04/silence_does_no

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a handful of interviews about rape, rape myths, consent, trial issues and victim support..

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The Day I Faced My Rapist In Court

The morning I was to read the statement in the courtroom would be the second time that the man who raped me and I were going to be in the same room. But unlike that day, we were in a room open to the public, and I could say what I felt and what I thought.
The assailant had pleaded guilty to the two rapes, so there was no need for the trial. I was given the option of sending my statement or reading it in the courtroom. I decided to read it in person. Four years had passed since the assault, two and a half years to find the rapist, a year before I decided to press charges, and several months to indict him.
I entered at the back of the room, and sat in the second or third row. He entered by the front, on the right, and sat in the first row. He was looking down and I could only see his back. Earlier, the district attorney made sure I wasn't going to shout at him or call him names. She hadn't read the statement I'd written in advance. She sat me at a table in the front of the courtroom. I began to speak, but nobody understood me. M told me to start again, to speak up, and to speak more slowly. I did. The room quieted, and after I finished, there was complete silence:
"In the act of presenting charges, my identity is revealed. I have a name, I am recognized as a subject, a person. This should make my assailant aware that I am a person and of the damage of his violent act upon me. But it also implies that he knows who has presented the charges. I fear I could be attacked again."
Instead of blaming him, I calmly analyzed the damage done by his abuse. I explained how my relationship suffered and eventually ended. How for years I felt like a refugee without a home. How I lost self-confidence and hope. How I was constantly sad and lacked enthusiasm. How I felt unconnected to others and ended up isolating myself. How my perception of life had changed: I no longer looked forward to the future, I didn't enjoy my present and often thought about death. How I continually lived in fear. I wanted the rapist to listen to the effect of his action upon me, and also I wanted the judge to understand that the rape had not used an excess of cruelty and violence. I shared the fears I had for my life, my concern that other women would be raped, and brought up my fears about the length of sentences:
"This crime is not a rational thing. I was held in my own house, forced to be contained, silenced, and raped. He applied cruelty—threatening death and humiliation, making me an object, raped—but no more than was necessary to get what he wanted, not in excess. It was a violent act, because rape is a violent act, but he wasn't aggressive. I do not hate him as a person but I do hate what he did. It is not only that this is illegal, it is that it is also unfair and wrong. But still complexity must remain, and the knowledge that each of us is a person and must be treated as such. Believing in the force of humanity for changing an individual and a world, I express my will of the sentence to have no excess and to be rather short than long."
I understood the legal system as a way of settling matters, of drawing a line and moving forward. I faced the risk that my argument would be misinterpreted as implying I hadn't been raped. But I didn't want to simplify the issues because I was the victim. I wanted to be as fair as if it hadn't happened to me, not to fall into the temptation of excess, now that I had the opportunity to speak. I did it from fear, but also out of fairness. By requesting that the sentence be short rather than long, I may have risked that my attacker would come after me sooner rather than later, while I was very tired of living in fear. When I left the room, I felt as if I was untouchable.


Excerpted from Rape New York by Jana Leo. Available now from Feminist Press.

http://jezebel.com/5769530/the-day-i-faced-my-rapist-in-court

i found it particularly interesting (in relation to rape/ trauma and its after-effects) what she says around 9:00 onwards...

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“For the first time in history, children are growing up whose earliest sexual imprinting derives not from a living human being, or fantasies of their own; since the 1960s pornographic upsurge, the sexuality of children has begun to be shaped in response to cues that are no longer human. Nothing comparable has ever happened in the history of our species; it dislodges Freud. Today's children and young men and women have sexual identities that spiral around paper and celluloid phantoms: from Playboy to music videos to the blank females torsos in women's magazines, features obscured and eyes extinguished, they are being imprinted with a sexuality that is mass-produced, deliberately dehumanising and inhuman.”

Naomi Woolf

female chauvinist pigs

'I first noticed it several years ago. I would turn on television and find strippers in G-strings explaining how best to lap dance a man into orgasm. I would flip the channel and see babes in tight, tiny uniforms bouncing up and down on trampolines. Britney Spears was becoming increasingly popular and increasingly unclothed, and her undulating body ultimately became so familiar to me I felt like we used to go out.

Charlie’s Angel’s, the film remake of the quintessential jiggle show, opened at number one in 2000 and made $125 million in theatres nationally, reinvigorating the interest of men and women alike in leggy crime fighting. Its stars, who kept talking about ‘strong women’ and ‘empowerment’, were dressed in alternating soft-porn styles – as massage parlour geishas, dominatrixes, yodelling Heidis in alpine bustiers. (The summer sequel in 2003 – in which the Angel’s perilous mission required them to perform stripteases – pulled in another $100 million domestically). In my own industry, magazines, a porny new genre called the Lad Mag, which included titles such as Maxim, FHM and Stuff, was hitting the stands and becoming a huge success by delivering what Playboy had only occasionally managed to capture: greased celebrities in little scraps of fabric humping the floor.  

… this new raunch culture didn’t mark the death of feminism, they told me; it was evidence that the feminist project had already been achieved. We’d earned the right to look at Playboy; we were empowered enough to get Brazilian bikini waxes. Women had come so far, I learned, we no longer needed to worry about objectification and misogyny. Instead, it was time for us to join the frat party of pop culture, where men had been enjoying themselves all along.

When I asked female viewers and readers what they got out of raunch culture, I heard similar things about empowering miniskirts and feminist strippers, and so on, but I also heard something else. They wanted to be ‘one of the guys’; they hoped to be experienced ‘like a man.’ Going to strip clubs or talking about porn stars was a way of showing themselves and the men around them that they weren’t ‘prissy little women’ or ‘girly-girls.’ Besides, they told me, it was all in fun, all tongue-in-cheek, and for me to regard this bacchanal as problematic would be old-school and uncool.

I tried to get with the program, bit I could never make the argument add up in my head. How is resurrecting every stereotype of female sexuality that feminism endeavoured to banish good for women? Why is labouring to look like Pamela Anderson empowering? And how is imitating a stripper or a porn star – a woman whose job it is to imitate arousal in the first place – going to render us sexually liberated?'

ariel levy

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susan brownmiller:

'further, "females more often than males reported 'disgust' and 'offense.'"

from whence comes this female disgust and offense? are females sexually backward or more conservative by nature? the gut distate that a majority of women feel when we look at pornography, a distaste that, incredibly, is no longer fashionable to admit, comes, i think, from the gut knowledge that we and our bodies are being stripped, exposed and contorted for the purpose of ridicule to boster that 'masculine esteem' which gets its kick and sense of power from viewing anonymous, panting play-things, adult toys, dehumanized onjects to be used, abused, broken and discarded. this, of course, is also the philosophy of rape.'

'by seeing the rapist always as a stranger, never as one of their own, and by viewing the female as a careless, dumb creature with an unfortunate tendency to stray, they exhorted, admonished and warned the female to hide herself from male eyes as much as possible. in short, they told her not to claim the privileges they reserved for themselves... the message they gave was to live a life of fear and to do it they appended the dire warning that the woman who did not follow the rules must be held responsible for her own violation.'

'but the irony, of course, is that while men successfully convinced eachother and us that women cry rape whith ease and glee, the reality is that victimized women have always been reluctant to report the crime and seek legal justice - because of the shame of public exposure, because of that complex double standard that makes a female feel culpable, even responsible, for any act of sexual aggression committed against her, because of possible retribution from the assailant, and because women have been presented with sufficiend evidence to come to the realistic conclusion that their accounts are recieved with harsh cynicism that forms the first line of male defense.'

'women have been excluded by tradition and design from all significant areas of law enforcement, from the police precinct, from the prosecutor's office, from the jury box and from the judge's bench, up to and including appellate and supreme court juristdictions, has creasted a doube handicap for rape victims seeking justice under the laws of a man's devise.'

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lighter fluid

Nancy Venable Raine describes finding the pair of underwear that she was wearing when she was raped, and her subsequent experience with anger:

"I stood up slowly, as if not to wake the forces that I had unwrapped, and went to the kitchen for a baking sheet, a can of lighter fluid, a box of long kitchen matches, and a soup spoon. I put the newspaper and its contents on the tray and slipped down the stairs and out the back hallway door. I carried everything outside to a corner of the garden near the pond where the ducks were gliding on the dark, still water. I placed the wood and the underpants on top of the newspaper, doused them with lighter fluid, and struck a match. I watched what happened.

Then I imagined the worst thing I have ever imagined: the man who had raped me burning up alive. I imagined his screams of agony, his hideous pain. I saw the fat under his dirty skin crackling in the flames. A terrible pleasure consumed me. "Die," I said, over and over.

Until this moment, I had not allowed myself to feel my hatred. Now my body felt huge and powerful. It felt good to be a monster, very good. My mind-all thoughts and feelings-seemed to vanish into the pleasure of the pain I gave him. His pain, my pleasure made a perfect desolation. I relished it...I thought I was fine now that I had killed my underpants."


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What felt [safe] was to tell her how furious I was that the rapist had driven me to a shrink. It was his fault I was falling apart. I told Helen that my rape was 'worse than death,' and that I felt the rapist had destroyed my life, that I could never rebuild it. 'Never, never,' I said. I hate him with my entire being. I wanted to see him dead. I wanted to kill him myself. I had never expressed my rage to another human being this directly. It was no longer deflected onto someone or something else in my life. It was the rapist I hated that night.

N. Raine

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“To live in a culture in which women are routinely naked where men aren't is to learn inequality in little ways all day long. So even if we agree that sexual imagery is in fact a language, it is clearly one that is already heavily edited to protect men's sexual--and hence social--confidence while undermining that of women.”

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One result of turning a blind eye to the horrors of the world, because you can stand only so much, is that you end up forgetting that each individual who is subjected to heinous suffering is your fellow, your equal, and that you could have been in their shoes, and that he or she could one day have become your friend.

Michel Fitoussi Stolen Lives: Twenty

Years in a Desert Jail

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women did not invent dust. the sticky residue that collects on the kettle does not come out of women's vaginas. it is not oestrogen that covers the dinner plates in tomato sauce, fishfinger crumbs and bits of mash. my uterus did not run upstairs and throw all of the kids' clothes on the floor and put jam on the banister. and it's not my tits that have skewed the global economy towards domestic work for women.

caitlin moran

victim training

 from susan brownmiller's Against Our Will:

i strongly recommend this book to everyone, whether you're a victim of rape & abuse or not..
it's very insightful..

women are trained to be rape victims. to simply learn the word 'rape' is to take instruction in the power relationship between males and females. to talk about rape, even with nervous laughter, is to acknowledge a woman's special victim status.

we hear the whispers when we are children: girls get raped. not boys. the message becomes clear. rape has something to do with our sex. rape is something awful that happens to females: it is the dark at the top of the stairs, the undefinable abyss that is just around the corner, and unless we watch our step it might just become our destiny.

rape seeps into our childhood conscoiusness by imperceptible degrees. even before we learn to read we have become indoctrinated into a victim mentality. fairy tales are full of a vague dread, a catastrophe that seems to befall only little girls.

sweet, feminine little red riding hood is off to visit her dear old grandmother in the woods. the wolf lurks in the shadows, contemplating a tender morsel. red riding hood and her grandmother, we learn, are equally defenseless before the male wolf's strength and cunning. the wolf swallows both females with no sign of a struggle.

but enter the huntsman - he will right this egregious wrong. the kindly huntsman's strength and cunning are superior the the wolf's. with the twist of the knife red riding hood and her grandmother are rescued from inside the wolf's stomach. 'oh, it was so dark in there,' red riding hood wimpers. 'i will never wander off into the forest as long as i live.'

red riding hood is a parable of rape. there are frightening male figures abroad int he woods and females are helpless before them.

better stick close to the path, better not be adventurous. if you are lucky a frindly male may be able to save you from certain disaster. ('funny, every man i meet wants to protect me,' says mae west 'i can't figure outy what from.')

those who doubt that the tale of red riding hood contains this subliminal message should consider how well peter fared when he met his wolf, or even better, the survival tactics of the three little (male) pigs. who's afraid of the big bad wolf? not they.

the utter passivity of red riding hood in the teeth of the wolf is outdone by sleeping beauty, who lay immoblie for one hundred years before she was awakened by the kiss of the prince. as a lesson in female sexuality, sleeping beauty's message is clear. the beauteous princess remains unresponsive until mr. right comes along.

snow white in her glass coffin also remains immobile until her prince appears. cinderella, too, needs a prince to extricate her from her miserable environment. thus is female sexuality defined. beautiful passivity.

wait, just wait, prince charming will soon be by; and if it is not prince charming but the big bad wolf who stands at the door, then proper feminine behavior still commands you to stay immobile. the wolf is bigger and stronger than you are. why try to fight back?  

susan brownmiller

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'every summer, my mother would set jam jar traps for wasps near the dustbins in our driveway. baited with smears of stickiness and primed with water and a drop of detergent, the poor insects would be tempted, tumble in and drown. but not if ...i was there. i would sit among the buzzing throng and offer my little fingers as lifelines to the doomed creatures. soon i learned that wasps would never sting their rescuer, just climb up, clean up, shake off the water and buzz off. my reward was to meet a little animal that no one else seemed to want to know. black and yellowin simple but startlingsymmetry, so neat, so purposeful - a triumph of form and function, a beautiful piece of deco design. with a face of fury and superlative predatory prowess, it performs essential duties, creates a nest of extraordinary delicacy and yet is universally loathed and ruthlessly persecuted because of complete ignorance. but the common wasp, vespula vulgaris, is one of my oldest and best friends. in saving those doomed individuals i learned to love wasps. and i learned to love life - all life.
it was much later that i learned why life has a collective value; why each and every organism is implicitly important to the community and ecosystem that it has evolved a niche in.'

c. packham

 a post taken from http://www.2ndcouncilhouse.co.uk/blog/

It was Germaine Greer who said that women never really know how much men hate them. Thanks to the internet we’re starting to find out, as “banter” comes out of the backrooms and spews itself over the web. Unilad has just been shut down after it pointed out approvingly that rapists have rather good odds, with the “lads” blaming humourless feminazis for spoiling their fun. A week or so ago, a friend posted up a list of the things that Mens Rights Activists quote out of context to demonstrate how nutty feminists are. Among them was a quote attributed to Marilyn French stating “all men are rapists“. This statement as a view of how feminists see men is often given as evidence of the misanderous nature of feminism and how ludicrous it is, but the full quote, given below, which comes from “The Women’s Room” and is spoken by Val – a radical feminist character in the novel, bears further inspection. Over the years, I have argued many times with (primarily male) comrades as to the meaning of this statement, with many taking considerable offense at the implication that I consider them individually to be rapists/potential rapists. Frequently accompanied by denials of individual responsibility and/or temperament to commit something which is – at least in name – so transgressive and stigmatised.

‘…all men are rapists and that’s all they are: they rape us with their eyes their laws and their codes.’

The contextualisation given in the full quote above demonstrates the structural nature of male sexual violence, and it is well worth unpacking the eyes, laws and codes which entrap men to this role. Mere denial, is simply a refusal to see, yet the gaze lives on; assertions of legal behaviour does not negate the judicial structure which enables violation, and a cultural stance in opposition does not challenge the codes which sustains it. Only by a careful examination of the power structure which sustains patriarchal heterosexual relations is there the opportunity to destroy it. The concept of “the Gaze” originates with Satre. Satre explore the concept of “The Other” – that which is not us. That when we are alone, we are a self-contained active subject, but when we share space with someone else we become aware of ourselves as an object in the Other’s environment. Because we objectify the world around us, we are aware that “The Other” as a sentient being, does likewise, and we view ourselves no longer as purely an active subject but as an object which is gazed upon. Lacan took this concept further, Lacan’s gaze does not require the physical existence of another, as the gaze is not something which belongs to the other, but is within ourselves, as a perception of being viewed. Thus it is not the act of being seen which creates the gaze in our heads, but the epistemic knowledge that it is possible that we may be; and from that there is no escape. Laura Mulvery coined the term the “Male Gaze” in the context of film studies, exploring how film makers produce narrative from the point of view of male subjects. Yet it has a broader application to all forms of media. Men are the primary producers of media, and the texts they produce primarily for a male audience while women are the spectacle to be gazed upon. When women consume male orientated media, they must adopt the gaze as intended, yet at the same time identify with the female. They see themselves as Others see them, this gift given not by a theological God, but by the omniscient patriarchy, eradicating the foolish notion that they may be active subjects in a world controlled by men. Women internalise the Male Gaze, everywhere they go and in everything they do they are subject to the knowledge that they are the objects viewed through a patriarchal lens which dictates their behaviour and the limits of their agency. Until the Male Gaze is castrated, free and genuine consent is impossible in a world where the agency of the subject is constrained.

‘because penetration by males is what women are for, if we are raped we have to prove not just that we didn’t say yes, which is impossible to prove, but that we specifically and emphatically said no, which is also impossible to prove..’

Women exist in a legal state of permanent consent. Consent is an automatic defense to a charge of rape and unless there is sound evidence that consent was withdrawn, it is frequently assumed that it was not. If a woman did not actively withdraw her consent, there is no case to answer – the legal status of a woman is that of consent to sexual intercourse. Furthermore, the presumption of innocence over guilt in effect means that it is insufficient for a conviction to be upheld purely on the basis that a woman asserts that she withdrew her consent in the absence of such evidence. For some women, the withdrawal of consent becomes in effect a legal non-option. Crimes of sexual violence against sex-workers are notoriously difficult to prosecute, as the assumption is that they payment has brought the agreement not to withdraw consent. Any evidence that a woman may not have withdrawn consent, is evidence of the innocence of the accused. Such evidence may include payment; sexually arousing dress; prior sexual activity; drug or alcohol use; being asleep; being sexually unattractive, or being insufficiently aware of danger. Up until 1991 the majority of women lived within a formal legal state which denied her the right to remove her consent: a woman could not withdraw consent to sexual intercourse from her husband; marriage was an automatic defense. Although that has thankfully been repealed, most married women today, entered into a legal contract which removed their right to say “no”. Within such a legal framework, consent is compromised. If you are a sex worker and you know that there is little chance of obtaining retribution because you were paid, there is equally little point withdrawing it. In circumstances where you know that what will be done to you will be seen as quite acceptable in the eyes of the law, resistance is futile. When your consent is irrelevant, why bother withdrawing it. Until the legal state of permanent consent is revoked, free and genuine consent is impossible in a world where that consent is a legal irrelevance.

‘A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm… This violence, however, is neither biologically nor divinely ordained. Much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change.’

The term “rape culture” was first coined in the mid-70s, but has gained a new popularity recently as feminists have looked to the cultural modes which sustain and perpetuate sexual violence. Much of the money devoted to popular campaigns to prevent sexual violence has focused on what women should or should not do to avoid becoming victims – seeking to impose limitations on their dress, behaviour, alcohol consumption and travel arrangements. By implication transgressing these rules implies a recklessness which has invited attack and any public sympathy or support for such transgressive women who meets with such violence is tempered with an “I told you so” undertone and restatement of how important it is to follow the rules. Related to this is the sexual epithets, “prude” and “slut”. Two sides of the same coin they seek to define women’s sexuality in reference to the patriarchal power structure – they are not opposing descriptions of womens sexual behaviour, but demands upon it. The “slut” challenges patriarchal norms which consider women to be the gatekeepers of sexuality, that sex is something done to women. The slut, as an identified sexually active woman is [an] easy [victim]. The “prude” challenges patriarchal norms which considers the purpose of women as being for fucking. The prude, as an identified sexually inactive woman is [a] frigid [bitch]. The effect of rape culture is to deny women control over their sexuality in combination with excusing male violations of female sexual boundaries; to reinforce the patriarchal definition of the purpose of women as being for fucking while simultaneously reinforcing the patriarchal definition of fucking as something done to women. Until rape culture is overcome, free and genuine consent is impossible in a world which indoctrinates women to be the objects of male sexuality. This combination of the male gaze, the permanent legal state of consent and rape culture conspires to produce an unhealthy sexual environment within which all individual sexual encounters take place. When McKinnon said “In a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent”, it is the weight of the eyes, laws and codes which bear down on each interaction, shaping its direction.