I had a great time on KPFK last night. I like doing radio programs; there’s something thrilling about the adrenaline rush of being “live”, not having a script, and knowing that there’s nothing worse in the world than “dead air.” (The link to last night’s program is here; lots of pitching for Pacifica Radio but also some clips of Jackson Katz and me as we chat with the hosts of Feminist Magazine. I don’t come on until about 16 minutes into the one-hour show.)
The last question that both Jackson and I were asked revolved around what we saw as our biggest challenge as male feminist activists. I had a moment to think about it while Jackson gave his reply, and I flashed immediately to a meeting I’d had in my office yesterday morning. Dinah, one of my students, is a sexual assault survivor. A year ago, while working on a progressive political campaign in the Midwest, she was raped by a renowned male activist, a man in his thirties. Dinah was eighteen at the time. Dinah wants her anonymity protected, hence the pseudonym and no specifics about the group with which she and the perp were affiliated.
Dinah has been politically engaged since she was in junior high school, working on a host of left-wing causes. Articulate and brave, as soon as she turned eighteen she spent school breaks traveling around the country working on various campaigns. And on one such campaign, while traveling alone with this celebrated male activist through rural Wisconsin, she was raped by this man she looked up to and admired. The “culture” of this campaign was hostile to law enforcement, viewing the police through a class and race-conscious lens of suspicion. Instead of calling the cops, Dinah confided the truth about what had happened to some women in the movement, who insisted that she keep quiet. What had happened, she was told, was “regrettable” and “unfair”, but the harm was to her alone (or so these other activists claimed.) They suggested to Dinah that she consider the “good” her rapist was doing for the cause. “He’s helping so many”, she was told, “and he hurt you. Isn’t it better to just avoid him? We’ll warn him to shape up, but we can’t go further than that. He’s too valuable.”
Anyone who knows the history of sexual politics in liberation movements will recognize an old and familiar story. From digital history:
Women within (Sixties-era) organizations for social change often found themselves treated as “second-class citizens,” responsible for kitchen work, typing, and serving “as a sexual supply for their male comrades after hours.” “We were the movement secretaries and the shit-workers,” one woman recalled. “We were the earth mothers and the sex-objects for the movement’s men.” In 1964, Ruby Doris Smith Robinson presented an indignant assault on the treatment of women civil rights workers in a paper entitled “The Position of Women in SNCC,” to a SNCC staff meeting. Stokely Carmichael reputedly responded, “The only position for women in SNCC is prone.”
Forty years on, Stokely Carmichael’s view of female activists in the social justice movement remains astonishingly — infuriatingly — common. Dinah, who was born in 1991, isn’t the first young woman I’ve known to be raped or abused or harassed by a male compatriot in an ostensibly progressive organization. These assaults happen in ethnic organizations like MEChA, in animal liberation/welfarist groups like the ALF or PETA, in anti-war coalitions like ANSWER. That’s not a comprehensive list, mind you. But what all these groups have in common is an ideological conviction that women’s liberation needs to take a back seat to something “more important.” It doesn’t matter whether that “more important” thing is fighting for farm workers, or stopping the war in Afghanistan, or liberating lab animals. In each instance, young women activists are warned that reporting sexually abusive behavior by a male fellow activist jeopardizes the movement and does irreparable harm to the cause — a cause, that the young victimized woman is always reminded, is so much bigger than her.
Obviously, sexual abuse is not just a phenomenon found on the left. It’s rampant in conservative churches, as we well know. But most secular progressives aren’t terribly surprised when organizations dedicated to upholding traditional sexist values condone or cover up the worst of sexist behavior. As a Christian, of course, I am appalled when the language of my faith is used to excuse or enable rape. And as a liberal, I am equally infuriated when women in supposedly progressive organizations are told that a climate of sexual harassment and abuse must be endured for the sake of some “greater good.” Particularly among radicals, there remains an ugly tendency to see feminism as being a bourgeois white woman’s phenomenon. The insistence that women’s liberation is anti-revolutionary, or insignificant, or just so much liberal navel-gazing, allows rape culture to thrive in far too many radical political and ethnic organizations. And brave young women like Dinah get raped and tossed aside.
So I made it clear in my brief time on the radio last night that the biggest challenge I face as a male feminist is the biggest challenge we’re all facing: the relentless pressure to de-prioritize sexual liberation in favor of some other ideal. While feminism is not the only cause worth fighting for, the feminist principles of women’s equality, autonomy, and body integrity must be incorporated into every political and social movement. The ends do not justify the means; we can’t build a more just world on the use and abuse of our most vulnerable — and our most committed — young activists. As a male feminist in particular, I know that ends and means must be congruent. Private virtue and public action need to be seamless. Private virtue without public action is irresponsible quietism; public action without private virtue guarantees both failure and heartache.
WTF is this PETA shit? I mean obviously I agree that it’s wrong to cover up rape, and in the light of an actual rape, the reactions of the women seem pretty bizarre.
But with less extreme cases… I see your point in feminist groups, but outside that narrow definition, with something like animal rights, a sexist advocate can still do a huge amount of good. I don’t condone that behavior or anything, but to act like feminism is some all-important, omnipotent fascia that connects all progressive groups is dumb. A raging misogynist can be a huge help to the NAACP.
Omega, I disagree. Of course nobody’s perfect, but abuse of power is a serious character flaw that will reflect badly on whatever cause the person is promoting. Think about how many people are turned off to Christianity because of the sexism and homophobia of church leaders.
It’s also dangerous to encourage anyone to think he is too important to be held accountable. That can lead to all kinds of bad decisions by the activist in question, both in how he treats women and in other areas. Pride has no natural stopping point.
More generally, I want to question the assumption that seems to underlie your comment, namely that concern about sexism is a special interest that is appropriate in feminist groups but irrelevant elsewhere. Whenever there are women in a social group or political movement, the issue of their “equality, autonomy and bodily integrity” (as Hugo said) is already on the table, whether acknowledged or not.
Understood that you could have named any number of activist groups, but PETA was a poor choice. That one already catches a lot of flak from feminists, for their long campaign of using images of naked or near-naked women to oppose killing animals: “I’d rather wear nothing than wear fur!” But they understand what I don’t think you’re very impressed by, that women with their clothes off is a cheap way to grab attention, and when we let it pass, we’re really on the road to condoning pornography, which is another form of abuse of the female body.
Speaking of Christian leaders–since the annual holiday dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr was inaugurated, it’s been claimed (and I think generally believed) that he was repeatedly unfaithful to his wife. I’ve never heard suggestions that he sank to violence, but it’s hard to hear that kind of talk about someone we revere. Were people who knew the truth during his lifetime saying “Keep quiet about this for the sake of the cause”? I bet they were.
And Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, a relationship that was talked of but angrily denied by Jefferson–Oh Tom, how could you?
Let’s start judging men by how they treat women. Then we’d see who’s a hero.
Jendi, agreed.
Merton said that God writes straight with crooked lines. None of us are perfect, or perfectly congruent in how we live out our values. But there’s crooked, and there’s downright broken, and rapists fall firmly in the latter category.
No one is saying that PETA (or if you prefer, PCRM or the Humane Society) or the campus Black Student Alliance, or what have you, should make feminism their top priority. But campaigns for justice can and should embrace feminist principles (like anti-racist principles) as a sine qua non of doing justice work. That gives some wiggle room, say, on PETA’s images — there are feminists in PETA, and PETA is led by a woman who calls herself a feminist, Ingrid Newkirk. (I am not a PETA member. I share their goals but not their tactics.) There may even be wiggle room on infidelity, too, I think. But there can’t be wiggle room on harassment, assault, and rape.
I get the feeling Hugo doesn’t like me.
“Calls herself a feminist”. Huh. Sarah Palin does that too, or others have done it on her behalf. So of course it’s true.
Don’t you Brits say “Feminist is as feminist does”?
@Omega: I’d agree with you that sexism — like all kinds of moral failings — doesn’t necessarily stop someone from being effective as an activist, or at whatever else they do. But that’s no kind of reason to condone it: we should still hold them at least as accountable for their sexism (and racism, etc.) as we would anyone else (probably more, since they’re putting themselves on a higher moral horse to start with). And it’s certainly no reason to hush up a rape! Someone may be a great activist, or a great film-maker, or a great bricklayer, but if they’ve committed a (moral and legal) crime, it’s still a crime.
More generally, Hugo’s point here doesn’t just seem to apply to feminism/sexism; the same arguments apply every time some moral principles get sacrificed in the name of others. Torturing suspects in the name of preventing terrorism also comes to mind…
I find the attitudes of some of your responders dangerous. Would anyone realistically say about someone: “he has a little problem with stealing from those who put him up, but he’s a good person” or “he has a little problem as a pyromaniac, but we should ignore this” or similar with other issues?
Commonly many people act like rape is something that one can just “get over”. Besides the issues as to what has been done to someone like “Dinah” herself, which is most significant, can anyone realistically expect that men such as this are not raping numerous others and will continue to do so until they are held fully accountable for what they are doing?
If someone in PETA is being abused, it is important, regardless of what I think of PETA.
I would hope that some of your readers would talk with people who have been traumatized by rape, getting held up at gunpoint/knifepoint, been in a fatal or near/fatal car accident or many other things and try to understand how tough it is.
IF – I was a part of any cause – that tolerated and thus tacitly supported such behavior I would speak out Against the Organization strongly believing that their hypocrisy was saying their “true message”. Thanks!
It’s one thing to look at a practice that people believed was acceptable 200 and some odd years ago and say, well, that’s what people did back then. Nasty by today’s standards, but forgivable in light of the sociopolitical context of the time, and look at the great things he did…But RAPE in the 21st century?!? That’s the same as condoning slave ownership in the here and now. For what?!? The pelts of some rodent species that would be seen as the same nuisance as Australian rabbits and Canadian gophers were the entire population set free tomorrow?
I don’t wear the stuff, and I have my meat consumption down to the easiest-to-raise-humanely species (poultry), but torturing human beings to protect rodents is absurd. Kinda reminds me of the old episode of Star Trek where the halogram accidentally became sentient and started a war to liberate his halographic buddies, who were less sophisticated than half the gamer fantasies on the market right now.
Was that PETA example for real?!?
I don’t care what the cause is. Unless those people were saving hundreds of HUMAN lives, raping a young woman who is barely an adult is inexcusable. And anti-choice rallies DON’T count–for obvious reasons.
People just don’t get it. Rape is a violent act of theft. If a man forcibly held down another man and cleaned out his wallet, he wouldn’t be seen as the “daddy” of any movement. He’d be in prison.
Abuse of women is a systemic problem, and not just the product of ‘a few bad apples’. By focusing on the instances of violence and silencing within one particular movement — and not on the broader problem of the construction of masculinity and femininity, the view of women as sexual objects, and the need to control women using violence — your criticism is reformist and liberal, and therefore part of the problem.
The systemic misogyny within the Left in the 60s is part of the reason radical feminism came about, and the liberal/reformist attitude that some feminists have toward the patriarchy reminds me of why I’m a radical feminist in the first place.
As one who was physically, sexually and emotionally abused by “liberal, progressive” hippie-dippie parents, I can relate. It seems that there’s always some people who are expected, no, forced, to put their own welfare/integrity absolutely last. Women are one, and kids–especially oddball introverted kids–are another. Butters is right, it is systemic.
And I still don’t know how I’d feel about letting one person be raped in order to save hundreds, or even one, other human life. (Maybe even if it ws MY life, I don’t know.) Let alone the nonhuman kind. I haven’t had anything to do with PETA, and now I am having even less.
Uh, for the record, Dinah wasn’t raped in PETA! It wasn’t even an animal rights organization. I was listing groups in which this sort of behavior is problematic and indeed systemic. Not sure how people made the leap there.
I agree that this is very common. It’s why I posted the post. But something that is systemic can still be transformed. The baby need not be thrown out with the bath water, as it were.
This is about saying that the sexual abuse of women is incompatible with movements for justice, and so incompatible that preventing abuse must take equal priority with accomplishing other goals.
Wow, after experiencing the effects of misogyny, abuse, and sexism within the leftist organization that I work with, the women in the group and I now realize that this was not an isolated incident but is in fact pretty common among activist and progressive groups. One of the main problems we run into in trying to address the misogyny and abuse within the group is the refusal of some of the people to acknowledge the personal as political.
Here are some resources/articles I’ve read over the past few months. The Oakland Sister Circle especially has provided much inspiration to me and the women in my community.
http://libcom.org/library/sexism-anarchist-movement
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/feminist/activist_abuse.html
http://www.oaklandsistercircle.org/
http://www.oaklandsistercircle.org/OSCv1-draft20100622.pdf
http://www.truth-out.org/why-misogynists-make-great-informants59966
Butters is right that such things are systematic, but wrong in thinking you don’t deal with them on a case by case basis. Systematic doesn’t mean they’re a single, cohesive entity that can be addressed directly, they aren’t.
But the point doesn’t matter much here anyways; the response whether you’re a progressive advocation organisation, or just a model train enthusiasts club, and whether you want to take a particularly feminist approach or not. In all cases, you grab the guy by the scruff of his neck and toss him into the street, and do what you can for Dinah. The solution is the same whether it’s an instance of a larger, more systematic situation or not; that you put a dent in the larger, more systematic situation is just a bonus.
Whether someone who’s a bit racist can be a good feminist, or someone who’s a bit classist can be a good advocate for the disable, is an entirely separate issue, and it doesn’t serve anything except apologism for assaulting the members of your organisation to conflate them. (Nevermind that the answer to the latter has to be yes anyways, since we’re all at least a bit racist, classist, et al.)
For some people it is not. Some people think that if a valued member of a movement does a lot of good for the cause that good trumps any of the bad acts or ideas that person commits, especially if directed at people devalued by the movement. They think that if a movement itself does good then any harm caused or perpetuated by it also gets trumped. They seem to rationalize it as “The needs of our group outweigh the needs of your group.” It seems the more someone values their causes and the more righteous they consider those causes, the more likely they will excuse any number of things committed by people who help address those causes.
I slept on it and I decided that, for once, Hugo’s right. There shouldn’t be misogyny anywhere, but given the tone of most progressive movements it’s important that even mild sexism be nonexistent, just because it creates a sense of hypocrisy. I might even concede that in the umbrella of progressive movements it *does* reduce your effectiveness as an activist- for example, look at Malcolm X. He comes off as a total hypocrite when you take his uncompromising racial views and contrast it with his opinion on women.
I realized that the PETA example may have been hypothetical, to draw attention to the hypocrisy of covering up an immoral act for the sake of working toward correcting a different injustice.
That’s why I asked, was that example for real? I guess a vegan can be a rapist too, but the thought just struck me as Monty Python-ish.
Were you saying that women get raped in PETA, or have Pam Anderson’s boobies just been inspiring a bunch of slippery slope anti-porn rhetoric again?
Omega, may wonders never cease.
Yes, I’ve seen cases of sexual assault inside vegan animal rights organizations. The notion that those who profess love for vulnerable creatures are less likely to be rapists is sadly untrue; compassion for animals and respect for human dignity ought to be in synch, but they aren’t always. No group is immune, and to honor Dinah, I’m not gonna get into specifics here — save to make clear that no group is immune from this problem.
Vegan rapist. What a painful oxymoron. Some people really need to give their dicks a shake.
I think there’s a big difference between “mild sexism” and rape. Rape is definitely not mild! It’s one thing to make the occasional joke about women drivers, or think it’s not such a bad thing most CEOs are men. It’s entirely different to act on your views in such a way that causes severe, ongoing harm to a specific person. To get to the same level in, say, racism, you’d have to do more than just beat up someone for being black. You’d probably have to put them in the hospital for awhile. Or own a few slaves who tend your house and gardens. It’s not just being noncommittal to a cause that isn’t one’s own, it’s running in the complete opposite direction.
So what if an individual is helping “so many”? They aren’t the only person who is capable of their position. And they’ve shown they are capable of setting aside decency and morality when it suits them, so I don’t think we need to put up with that.
Angiportus, when I slid in that provision about saving hundreds of human lives, I was referrring to a very rare example of a just war. Not to derail the discussion by getting on about war and when it is and is not just.
I was just saying that in those rare cases, women go to war knowing that they will likely get raped in the line of duty. It’s not fair, just or excusable, but it happens, and that’s one situation where women do and should refuse to be squeamish about rape.
But that’s the only exception I can think of. Rape within a peaceful leftist movement is hypocritical.
I’ve known some vegan assholes, Xena. Guys who want to save lab rats also sometimes just want to get laid, screw the consequences.
I’m not sure what you mean about women in the army refusing to be squeamish about rape? Does that mean they should just take it for the sake of the country? I can’t say I agree with that. Rape is rape is rape.
There is no level of performance or helpfulness or ally status that justifies sexual abuse. Abusers are abusers; best case, a damaged soul capable of being salvaged, worst case, an evil soul intent on volitional harm. At any point on the spectrum, their “good work” might be a mitigating factor in how the throne of Heaven judges them, but it doesn’t count for shit down here. Save a million lives, rape your co-worker, get the fuck out.
The credibility of feminist organizations still hasn’t recovered from Clinton.
Hugo, I’m sorry I sounded like I thought it was PETA when it wasn’t; Xena, I didn’t know you were talking about a just war. People who go to war know also that they might be blown to bits, or die in the heat, or drown when their ship goes down, or that their bodies might be abused in different ways, including rape, if they get captured. And from what I recall of our side’s treatment of prisoners, it happens to men too–but the danger of rape, on top of those other things, still seems heightened for women.
I don’t want to be where the bullets are flying, so I didn’t enlist (I’m disabled anyway.) How much abuse from the enemy one should take for one’s country, I won’t claim to know, but one should definitely not have to put up with it from those on one’s own side.
And you’re right, that sort of crap has no place in any peaceful movement that claims to care about people. I know nobody’s perfect, but gee whiz. How to become able to straighten out or kick out leaders that abuse their privilege without destroying the movement, well, you smart folks will have to figure that one out; it’s beyond me. Maybe Sarah’s links will help. I hope she can call the people of the group she left on their nonsense; the salvageable ones need to be salvaged.
Agree with Geni, lets not bee rediculous assuming contrary positions.
I’m always skeptical that these people are really making a thoughtful, cost-benefit analysis when they act this way, instead of simply acting out of emotional allegiance. I like and admire person X, therefore what person X did can’t really be that bad, person X can’t be a bad person (rapists are bad, therefore X didn’t actually rape), and we need to minimize, deny and paper over anything that might suggest X is bad.
Which is not to excuse this behavior; I’m just of the opinion that they’re being assholes, rather than rationally assessing the correct course of action to take.
Geni, what Angiportus said. It’s not right, but it’s a war. If a woman enlists she could be captured, tortured, raped, killed, dismembered, etc., etc. That’s the choice she makes when she chooses to go to war in the first place. She’s a soldier, and that’s what soldiers do. Men get raped in combat too.
Like I said, that’s the only time the responsibility falls on the woman.
This is about Dinah, though. I think she should look for other victims and put together a class action suit against her assailant. NOT against the organization, but against the assailant. If she words her public statements properly, booting out the creep and dragging him through the civil courts might make the charity look better, not worse.
I meant that women soldiers should have the right to expect not to be raped by their comrades during war. What happens to POWs wasn’t what I meant. But if they’re abused by fellow soldiers or Marines, the rapists should be punished just as sevverly in wartime as in peacetime.
I agree, Geni. The Fight–be it a combat situation or a peaceful action against social injustice–is stressful enough without people who are supposed to be on the same side assaulting each other.
Somehow I knew someone would bring up Clinton.
My memory isn’t too clear on that scandal, but did he do anything worse than cheat on his spouse? I thought that the intern who went into the closet with him did so willingly. If I’m mistaken, then I feel like it is democrats/liberals whose credibility is compromised–except we weren’t the ones who cheated, and the politicians of the other side might not have been innocent either.
Other than that, Robert nailed it. And as a survivor of child molestation, I don’t know if such people can be salvaged.
I regret mentioning Clinton because while relevant it isn’t an undisputed case so it’s more likely to just cause argument. (I was thinking about the Juanita Broaddrick case, not Lewinsky.)
Polanski would have been a better example of someone who has done good work (artistically in this case rather than politically) but whose personal behavior negates that.
I do not think someone’s bad acts negate their good work, unless the bad act was related to the good work (such as victim’s advocate raping a disabled child in her care). The work stands separately from the person’s actions. So a person can enjoys Polanski’s films without supporting his actions. I think where people need to draw the line is assuming that because a person did something good or that we enjoyed that person ought not be punished for bad acts.
That’s a really unfortunate phrasing, particularly in light of your previous and exaggerated statement that rape in the line of duty is “likely” for women.
Men and women who enlist in the military voluntarily are accepting the risk that the enemy will do bad things to them. This doesn’t absolve the military of trying to prevent those bad things from happening, and it doesn’t mean that if anything bad happens to an active-duty soldier – oh, say, being gang-raped by employees of a civilian contractor – that it’s the soldier’s “responsibility” when that happens, or that they should accept it and STFU.
Thank you for this. I knew that this was an issue in churches, but I had not appreciated that this would be a universal vulnerability in groups which are trying to accomplish some sort of greater good.
I wonder if there is a direct relationship between a group’s sense of a unique and vital mission and their propensity for cover-up so that groups which believe that they what stands between humanity and doom are far more likely to engage in extreme suppression of abuse-allegations, where those who believe that they are but one of several organizations qualified to do the particular form of good that is their mission are more likely to deal with abuse allegations in a way which offers protection for victims and justice to offenders.
Sorry, Mythago, I forgot the qualifier should. Women DO get raped by fellow soldiers serving on the same side, and that SHOULD NOT happen.
Women (and men) DO get raped by the enemy in combat. That possibility SHOULD be accepted by ANYBODY who CHOOSES to enlist as part and parcel of CHOOSING to serve in battle. That’s the only time the responsibility for being raped SHOULD fall on the woman (or man).
I made these statements for the sake of contrasting them with the unstated ALL OTHER SITUATIONS. IN ALL OTHER SITUATIONS, rape is a violent act of theft. A CHARITY IS NOT A WAR. HOW DARE THEY DEMAND THAT DINAH SOLDIER ON through her violation for anything short of a massacre.
And I said just war. If the likelihood of soldiers getting raped by contractors is greater than the likelihood of soldiers getting raped by the ‘enemy’, I start to question who is protecting whom, and from what.
The strong likelihood of rape, dismemberment, death, etc. is what MAKES a war crucial, and therefore just. ‘Pre-emptive’ military actions are not just, imo.
I just clued in to where other commenters might not be grasping the premises for my comparisons.
The people that gave Dinah such apalling advice seem to be using a misguided and self-centered version of utilitarian calculus to convince her of what to do. I was pointing out that their concept of units of suffering on Dinah’s part to promote units of good for the group was flawed. If you’re going to place mathematical values on suffering and satisfaction to begin with, you have to compare apples to apples. Rape and humiliation of a human being to promote the wellbeing of lab rats or disgruntled workers or women without adequate daycare arrangements is not a balanced equation, and is therefore exploitation. Torture only balances against greater forms of torture.
Look up Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Peter Singer, Judith Jarvis Thompson (Fat Man problem) and Phillipa Foot (other Fat Man problem) for more explanations of and problems with this formula.
Ok, Mythago, now I am confused. I just scrolled up to see which commenter mentioned cost-benefit analysis and discovered that it was you. So was it just my wording, (admittedly typed too quickly) or did you have a problem with the overall gyst of my argument?
Xena, I think you’re confusing two different things here.
‘Cost-benefit analysis’ is what I mean by the mentality you (correctly) argue against in your post at your 10:56 a.m. post. I don’t disagree with you; what I am saying is that I believe that’s more of an excuse than what’s really going on in these people’s heads.
Re the military, your use of ‘responsibility’ is, as I said, a really unfortunate phrasing, because it suggested that it’s not only an occupational hazard but the soldier’s fault somehow and something they shouldn’t complain about. I’ve heard similar sentiments expressed in regards to sex workers.
Skylark:
“to get to the same level in, say, racism, you’d have to do more than just beat up someone for being black.”
???????????? WHAT???? Are you fucking Kidding?
White, middle/upper class BULLSHIT!
If you’ve never been fucked up by a group of vicious, ignorant, racist motherfuckers you should cap that thought RIGHT NOW! Some thirty and forty years after the fact I’m still carrying the memories, and shifts in mental and emotional behaviour, that resulted from being physically assaulted, many more times than once, just because I was in a minority. Never spent a night in or near a hospital either. ‘Conflate’ is a word used liberally in many of the posts here, I’d suggest that you get a grip on it’s meaning and take stock of what you believe to be equivalents in acceptable behaviour.
No Mythago, sex workers don’t deserve to get raped for choosing their profession any more than shop keepers do. That’s a peaceful activity for pay. Where I am, the courts are in the process of overturning legislation that made life difficult for sex workers, and I applaud Vallerie Scott and Teri Jean Bedford for their life long fight for legalization. They’re on my list of personal heroes.
Soldiers don’t deserve it, either. I’m just saying that if one chooses to do violence for pay, one should expect that violence will be done to him/her. Professional boxers should expect head injuries and people who work with animals should expect to get kicked or bitten once in a while. (Yeah, animals react to being held down for their vet checkups as if violence is being done to them.)
As for rape compared to other types of violence done during a war, it almost sounds as if you think rape is somehow worse than other types of torture. Is it somehow worse to say (or maybe just think) “thanks for getting raped so my daughter and I can live without fear” than “thanks for losing that leg to protect us “?
My point is that violence is violence is violence. Once an act of violence requiring hospitalization has been committed, there’s no more heirarchy of more and less degrading. Violent rape, anal rape, fingernail torture, skull pounding, it’s all the same and it’s all heinous. And charities are no place for it.
Xena, as I said, your phrasing was unfortunate because it seemed (unintentionally) to suggest ‘suck it up, you asked for it’ rather than ‘yeah, this can happen’. And while everybody agrees that getting shot is a risk of being a cop and getting bitten is a risk of being a veterinarian, I’ve only heard the sneering, “well that’s the risk you take” attitude in the context of rape; generally directed at sex workers.
But it’s not “all the same”. There’s a reason that mass rapes are being used as a weapon of war and genocide in Congo, and it’s not because the militas committing the rapes ran out of pliers. Does that mean that rape is the worst thing that can ever be done to anyone? Nope.
The mass rapes in DRC as an instrument of terror rely on a number of cultural factors too complicated to discuss here. The same means of torture enacted in Kenya against a Canadian couple doing missionary work turned out to be something of an Achilles heel on the part of the criminals that committed the act.
In that part of the world, it’s assumed that a raped woman tied up beside her dismembered husband will be rejected by him. He will lose his will to live, die slowly from blood loss, and she will be their property, to kill or abuse as the torturers see fit. That’s not what happened to the missionaries.
Her injuries were mild enough that she was able to struggle out of her bonds and run for help when the attackers let down their guard. If I remember correctly, doctors were able to reattach the man’s arms. At the very least, she saved his life and they came home. His speech about forgiveness was beautiful.
Most of the rapes in the DRC are much more brutal. Brutal enough to do serious damage to women’s (and children’s) bladders and bowels. If I had to choose between that and losing an arm, a leg, an eye, I couldn’t do it. It’s all the same, equally crippling. Even dying of HIV compared to dying of blood loss after getting hatcheted, how do you rank order that? Torture is torture is torture.
I have tried for days to come up with something to add and I can’t; I can’t get past the disgust and rage at this particular kind of victimization. The rape itslef is bad enough, but then on top of that was the hideous misuse of trust – not just abuse, but misuse in order to effect the rape, and then to benefit from others doing the cover up.
Anyway, I think Mythago got this right:
“I’m always skeptical that these people are really making a thoughtful, cost-benefit analysis when they act this way, instead of simply acting out of emotional allegiance.
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