Dear Caitlin, part 2

Edited to add: TRIGGER WARNING!  This article is about rape.

Caitlin, I’m sorry but you’ve disappointed me again.  Please don’t misunderstand me, in this age of Twitterstorms with some of us Twitterers criticising our feminist icons for what they say in their columns, I am not attempting to attack you.  I do still think your writing is great, I still have great respect for you.  I don’t expect everyone to get it right all the time, and I recognise that all of us humans are fallible.  It is wrong for me to put you on a pedestal and expect you to be perfect.  No-one can live up to that expectation.  I am truly thankful that you’ve attempted to grasp the nettle that is rape, and have started to try to make sense of the chasm in society where rapists get away with rape, and victims are blamed.  You’re not making a joke out of rape, you’ve moved away from the position you (appeared to) have when you were interviewed by Mia Freedman and talked about women clattering down the road in their heels which was the subject of my last blog to you (http://musingsofemilyrose.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/dear-caitlin.html ).  But, I don’t think you understand, not really.  Please, let me explain.  Please, listen.

I agree with you, and I applaud you, when you say, “The idea of “asking for it” – whether said by a lawyer in Delhi, a drunkard in a NYC bar or a careless woman gossiping in an office in Slough – is the single, toxic pathogen from which all our problems with rape blossom. Culpability. Blame.”  I agree with you, when you say, “Let’s not call this a sexual crime any more” because it isn’t a sexual crime.  Rape is about power, exerting power and control over a body.  It is not sex.  I personally get very angry with the newspapers when they use the terms ‘sexual assault’ or ‘sexual violence’ to minimise the crime.  To describe the systematic use of rape as a weapon of war in Mali, or Syria, as ‘sexual violence’ as Metro did this week, is absolutely wrong.  Euphemisms water down the impact, and they are unhelpful.  Let’s call a spade, a spade.  Rape is rape.

I agree with you, rape is a very hard word.  I was in group therapy this week, a group with 5 other women who have been raped.  Some by members of their family, some as children.  Some were in relationships with men who raped them regularly.  In the scheme of things, I guess I was ‘lucky’.  I was on a match.com date.  It was a ‘one off’, one night.  And, I didn’t do everything right, I was drinking.  I wasn’t wearing heels (because I rarely do) but I was dressed to impress, I was wearing jeans, but I was also showing cleavage.  For a long time afterwards, I did struggle with my culpability, had I given the wrong signals (despite saying very clearly that I didn’t fancy him so this really was going to be just a one-time dinner)?  Had I been incredibly irresponsible in putting myself at risk by drinking?  When I started to understand that my drinking and my clothing were not responsible for my rape, my rapist was responsible for my rape, I was able to start the healing process (which I am coming to think will be a process that lasts a life-time). 

But, I digress.  Rape is a very hard word.  At group therapy we are all asked to check-in at the start, to talk about our week.  The previous day I’d got into a conversation with a colleague about dating, would I go online to find someone.  And, rather than just say ‘no’, or that it ‘wasn’t for me’, I decided to be honest.  I said, no, I don’t do online dating, because I was raped when I did.  I am very frustrated by the silence that surrounds rape.  It happens to so many (you quote 1 in 20; there are some studies which claim that as many as 1 in 4 will suffer it in their lifetime), and the silence surrounding it means that survivors feel as though they are alone (when they’re not), the silence contributes to the internal feelings of shame & blame, and the silence means that many go blithely through life thinking that ‘it can’t happen to them.’  So, I decided not to be silent.  My colleague was shocked, I could see her pain for me in her face.  But, she also opened up to me about a vicious relationship she’d been in years earlier and how it still made her question her relationships, how trust is so hard to find, to feel. 

I shared this anecdote at group therapy.  It was the 5^th week of group.  In all that time, it was the first time one of us had actually used the word rape, named it for what it was.  Another girl shared later.  She said that my use of the word, the fact that I could say the word, had taken her breath away.  She couldn’t use the word, it had too much power.  You are right, it is a word with “baggage of shame, and blame, and ruin. A word so hard for an injured woman – or a man, or a child – to say”  but I entirely disagree with you when you argue for it not to be used.  Yes, it has been used to often to mean things that aren’t rape.  We mustn’t use it when we don’t mean rape.  To say our facebook account has been ‘fraped’, trivialises the word.  We mustn’t do that.  But, you are wrong to argue for the word to not be used at all.  Those of us who can say the word, must say it, to honour those that cannot.

The problem with rape is not the sex, as you say.  Sex has nothing to do with rape.  Sex is irrelevant to rape.  I agree with what you say about sex, it’s a confusing thing, with confusing emotions.  But, please don’t get mixed up and think that rape has anything to do with sex.  It really doesn’t. 

And then, your article became very hard to me to read.  Let me try to explain.  Rape is not an internalised violence, akin to a punch in the face.  There absolutely is a difference “ if it’s a vagina being brutalised, or an eye? If the weapon is a penis, or a cosh?”  When I read those words, I felt as though I was being strangled, there was a pain constricting my chest, I felt like you’d winded me.  The external body heals from an external wound.  Nearly 5 years later, the bruises have faded (I can still ‘just’ see where one of the biggest external injury was to my thigh, although no-one else would).  But, I am not healed.  I suffer from anxiety attacks, from bouts of severe depression.  My therapists have told me I am suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.  Your article makes absolutely no mention of the mental impact of internal trauma, it implicitly seems to suggest that because the body will heal after rape, we can call it assault, simplify the crime, make it easier for others to understand.  To call rape ‘assault’ is just another euphemism, minimising the impact on the survivor, telling the survivor that they have no right to be traumatised, that the pain they feel every day isn’t there.

You are right, rape is “one human ripping another human being to pieces,” and you are right, we shouldn’t call it sexual assault, but we shouldn’t call it assault either.  It is rape.  Rape is not, “Just a violence, like any other.”  Rape is not ‘just’ anything.  There is no other crime like it; even murder, because with a murder, you are dead, you are no longer suffering.  I agree with you, let’s not confuse the crime by equating it with sex, let’s ensure people everywhere understand that rape has nothing to do with sex.  But, let’s not confuse the crime by calling it assault either.  Let’s honour those survivors who still get up everyday and face this world knowing what they know about it, and honour those that couldn’t do that and ended their life because of it, by ensuring that people everywhere know how absolutely debilitating the crime of rape can be, is.  Let’s ensure people everywhere know the horror of rape. 

Caitlin, I am so happy & thankful that this is a topic that you’re trying to make sense of.  Too many women, men and children are forced to try to make sense of it for themselves.  I said before, you have a voice, a very loud voice.  You have a platform.  You can do so much to help change perceptions, to help change society.  Please, I hope you’ve understood what it was about your article that I felt insulted by.  I hope you understand that I am not trying to attack you personally.  I hope you understand that this is a dialogue.  I know you said last night in your reply to my tweet that no-one else had complained, that you had received only good feedback, including from rape counsellors.  I have spoken to other rape survivors about the article.  I am not the only one.  Caitlin, we need someone like you, who has a loud voice, to help fight our battles in society, to change things.  We hope you hear us. 

Below is the transcript of Caitlin Moran’s article that I quote, which appeared in the Times on Saturday 19^th January.

‘Let’s not call this a sexual crime any more – with its baggage of shame, and blame, and ruin’
That broken, ex post facto bastard’s curse – “She was asking for it” – reached its spiteful apogee last week, in the wake of the Delhi gang rape.

The lawyer representing three of the men charged with her murder, Manohar Lal Sharma, gave an interview you will want to hide from your children – but whether more urgently from your sons or your daughters, I cannot say. Both become more doomed if they read it and believe it.

“Until today, I have not seen a single incident or example of rape with a respected lady,” Sharma said – insisting the partner of the dead woman was “wholly responsible” for her death. The unmarried couple should not have been out so late at night, using public transport.

This woman, now dead, had brought this upon herself. She left the house, intending to have sex on a bus. She had essentially walked through the streets, looking for six men to help her commit suicide via an iron bar. She was searching for the quiet sound of a fly-zip, as ruinous as the sound of a bullet being thumbed into a gun. This is something women do.

The idea of “asking for it” – whether said by a lawyer in Delhi, a drunkard in a NYC bar or a careless woman gossiping in an office in Slough – is the single, toxic pathogen from which all our problems with rape blossom. Culpability. Blame.

It’s so hard to insist that rape can happen wholly unprompted, with the lights on, to a cheerful woman who has done everything “right”. Surely she had a token of ill luck somewhere on her body? Some evil glamour left in a pocket; a glance that had been better off left at home? Even though a new report shows one in 20 British women have suffered sexual assault – someone you have been in a room with, today – we think black lightning cannot fall on a sunny day, although we know it can with all the other crimes: on the bonnet of the drunk driver; in the nursery, with a shotgun.

The awful issue of blaming the injured is what makes rape so iniquitous – like telling children in care they should simply have picked better parents in the first place. Why does this happen?

Well, the problem with rape is the sex. As a species, we are still confused, overwhelmed, afraid of and intoxicated by sex. It is a cocktail, mixed in with religion, politics, suffrage, power, love, magic, fear, self-loathing and things left widely unspoken. It makes us drunk. It makes us dumb. It confuses us in manifold. Look here, at this pile, in merely its non-fatal complications: Fifty Shades of Grey, with its duct tape. Happy marriages, with their rape fantasies. Count the sex counsellors and agony aunts. Rape couldn’t happen on a bigger moral and philosophical fault-line. Rape couldn’t strike in a worse place.
That’s why I sometimes think we should do away with the word “rape” altogether. Let’s not call this a sexual crime any more – with its baggage of shame, and blame, and ruin. A word so hard for an injured woman – or a man, or a child – to say, now that we’ve used it in too many places, for too many disparate things, for it to be functionally descriptive of a crime.

Let’s call this crime something simpler, and less confusing, instead: internal assault. Intramural attack. Regard it just as we would an assailant violently forcing a hammer handle into a mouth, or puncturing an eardrum with a knife. Does it make any real difference if it’s a vagina being brutalised, or an eye? If the weapon is a penis, or a cosh? This is punching, but inside. This is the repeated piercing of someone’s body. When you put it like that, suddenly the issue of rape becomes very clear: how many women would ask for that?

The phrase “sexual assault” confuses a million men, and women, like Manohar Lal Sharma, right across the world – that troubled word, “sexual”, casting a shadow so deep that it hides the “assault” part altogether. It makes people think of rape merely as some sex that just “went wrong”.

The police report of the Delhi gang rape alleges that the victim was so badly broken, one assailant “pulled her intestines from her body with his hands”, before throwing her from a moving bus.

And yet, still, everything we debate about this incident is framed around it being a sexual assault. That they attacked her below, before they attacked her above, has defined it. It’s become another argument about men and women and desire and politics and culture. Rather than what it is – what all rapes are: one human ripping another human being to pieces.

Not sexual assault. Just – assault. Not a sexual crime. Just – crime. Not rape – with all the confusions we can’t afford, can’t bear, another generation to painfully sift through, as we have had to.

Just a violence, like any other.

Unity. Not Fragmentation

I woke up today to see Julie Burchill’s very angry defence of her friend Suzanne Moore all over my Twitter timeline.  I guess, because I sometimes write about rape, I follow, and am followed by, a number of wonderful people who also write about, or care about, rape and women’s issues.  Overwhelmingly, people have been greatly offended by that article.  And rightly.  But, it gives me a big dose of the sads.  Because, however wrong much of the sentiment was, it’s so frustrating to see so many powerful, loud women (and men) take the knives out to each other, when the real enemy is the culture we live in which enables us all to be oppressed.  The culture which means that of c. 95,000 rapes per year (one every 5 and a half minutes!), only 1,070 rapists are convicted.  The culture which means that a site like everydaysexism.com needs to exist to cast a light on the everyday oppression of women.  The culture which pays lip service to the idea that women should be paid equally for work, but in which the austerity cuts hurt women most – because they are more likely to be in part time work, to need benefits to supplement their incomes, which are being cut. 

On Privilege.

Let’s get this out of the way first.  Before the internet, and various Twitterstorms (debates, conversations?), I blithely assumed that privilege was something rich people had, primarily rich, white, men.  I’m aware now that I have privilege in bucketloads.  Sometimes I read an angry polemic by someone and actually feel marginalised because of my privilege.  I am (by most people’s standards) rich – I earn a very decent living.  I went to university.  I am white.  Because of this privilege, I often feel silenced.  I mustn’t complain because others have it worse.  I have to always be aware of when I am speaking if it’s my privilege speaking.  Catilin Moran said recently in an interview that rich women don’t get raped because they can afford a taxi home.  I took a taxi home, but I was still raped.  (I wonder if the rapist would have bothered with the hour+ journey on London transport it would have taken – perhaps penury would have saved me?  Or, did he pay?).  Nice, white, middle-class girls are apparently believed and have a greater chance of getting the case to go to court, and getting a conviction.  The problem with rape justice, is apparently (if you believe so many articles and blogs) a problem for the working class, for minorities, it’s not supposed to be a problem faced by people with privilege like mine.  Except it is.  My case didn’t go to court.  Apart from the fact that financially my life is slightly more comfortable than for others I am not sure what my privilege gives me.  And, I’ve been unemployed, I’ve signed on.  I know how that feels, how you’re made to feel worthless, how it feels to try to survive on JSA only.  One day, when I was unemployed, I found myself in the City, amongst the suits and briefcases.  I felt invisible, I felt like I was trespassing where I shouldn’t be. 

And that’s the thing.  I was about 2 months’ savings away from needing to stay on friends’ sofas.  My privilege doesn’t protect me from the economy, it doesn’t protect me from being raped, and it doesn’t guarantee me justice. 

Privilege is a red herring.  What matters in these discussions and debates is empathy.  Empathy, understanding, compassion.  Privilege can give someone a different perspective, different life experiences, but it doesn’t preclude the human ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to try to understand their life experiences, their perspectives.

On Feminism.

I’m one of those women who never identified as a feminist.  Whilst I wear comfortable shoes, and I used to own a pair of dungaree shorts in my early twenties, I’ve never wanted to be identified with the hairy armpits and the mad harrigan stereotype of a feminist.  I’ve never wanted to burn my bra, or felt the need to get angry for it being a man’s world.  Life was just life, with its associated inequalities – women are sometimes discriminated against, but so are other minorities.

And then I read Caitlin Moran’s ‘How to be a Woman’.  She asked, did I have a pussy, and did I care what happened to it.  If so, I was a feminist.  And, I liked that definition.  I’m a woman, and I care what happens to me as a woman, or because I’m a woman, so I can identify with that.  But then, came the attacks from the feminists.  How dare Caitlin Moran presume to write for all women (the title of the book) when she is white and privileged?  How dare she say she doesn’t care that she doesn’t write for black women or other minorities?  People are writing about feminism Before Caitlin, and after, and calling women like me who came to feminism through ‘How to be a Woman’ ‘baby feminists’.  Well, I ain’t no baby.

I haven’t read the feminist doctrines, I haven’t ‘studied’ it as a movement.  Many of the discussions I read (via Twitter, blogs, newspapers) use an intellectual language which, despite my education, I don’t understand and isn’t familiar to me.  It’s apparently not the patriarchy at fault, it’s a kyriarchy* (which I’m informed is pronounced like biryani, ky-ri-archy, which frankly just makes me smirk a little – and not because biryani is an Indian curry, but because it’s a food stuff) but whilst I now know that’s because there are groups of men who are also oppressed (e.g. gays), and it is apparently a much more ‘helpful’ word, I don’t see it that way.  It’s a word which isn’t in common parlance, and therefore isn’t helpful in making ordinary women understand that feminism is about them.  (* from Wikipedia: It is an intersectional extension of the idea of patriarchy beyond gender. Kyriarchy encompasses sexism, racism, economic injustice, and other forms of dominating hierarchy in which the subordination of one person or group to another is internalised and institutionalised.  Yep, even with that definition, it doesn’t make much sense).

I don’t identify with the word CIS to define my gender.  Julie Birchall made this point in her contentious, ugly, angry polemic.  But this, I did agree with, although certainly not the way she made it.  Julie Birchall struck a chord with me when she said the label CIS made her think of “cyph, cyst, cistern; all nasty stuff”.  She went into ugly, hurtful, bigoted language when she then said what she did about trans people, but she had a point about CIS.  I’m a woman, and so is a woman who was born of the male gender but has transitioned.  Your label is not mine.  But, I understand that in an intellectual debate, labels can be useful.  (For me, it’s like in kink.  I don’t really identify as submissive, or even masochist.  But, they are useful shorthand to describe the ‘bucket’ of kink that I do identify with.  But, as in the kink world, I prefer to just identify as kinky, in the actual world, I prefer to identify as a woman, and not as CIS-gendered). 

I liked @londonfeminist's first blog of 2013, a feminism 101. She boiled feminism down to “one very simple ideology: that women and men are equal.  Accept that, and whether you accept the label or not, you are a feminist.”  

The Big Feminist Issues.

Feminism has many fronts on which to fight.  Our decisions to let our lady-parts grow, trim, or wax are not the important ones (which Caitlin Moran seems to spend a lot of time on).  Whether we wear heels, or don’t is also rather irrelevant in the scheme of things.  We have to fight against a rape culture in which 1% of rapists are convicted, where institutions like the BBC, or the SWP, turn a blind eye, or sweep accusations under the carpet, where men in positions of power are excused because of the other good they do (Assange).  We have to fight so that women aren’t marginalised in party politics (local or national), on company boards, or management positions anywhere in the organisation, so that women earn equal pay for equal work, and have the option of gaining access to equal work.  We have to fight so that women aren’t forced to stay in violent relationships because the alternative is the street, to prevent the closure of refuges.  We have to fight so that women don’t have to skip food just so they can afford to feed their children.  When it comes to feminism, the big fights we have to fight are in the basics.  If feminism were put into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs* (and forgive the intellectualising here, it’s my privilege rearing it’s ugly head), we would be in the foundation layer of need – safety, security, food and shelter.  These arguments about intersectionality, these debates about language, are in the self-actualisation part of the hierarchy, at the top of the pyramid. 

Women are our own worst enemy.   I once tried to run a kink club for women, a safe space for women to play together without men.  We got it wrong with initially excluding MtF transgendered women, but the politics of it was a shitstorm.  Let me say it again, we were wrong to exclude MtF women.  We were wrong because MtF women are women.  We said we were wrong, we apologised for the hurt and upset.  But, the gender politics remained a shitstorm.  And not because of the trans issue.  Because, lesbians didn’t want to go to a place with bi women.  And then, we needed to include FtM too because the sisterhood was still supporting those who’d become men.  I will never try to run anything that is for women only again (yes, you can quote me).

In 2012 I saw two anti-rape demonstrations quagmire in politics – SlutWalk London for associating with Women Against Rape and their support for Assange (which was wrong, wrong, wrong, but it doesn’t mean you can’t support the underlying point of the march, which is against rape culture); Reclaim the Night for excluding men, and in Glasgow for apparently excluding sex workers too.  Rather than focus on the underlying message of the marches – rape is bad, don’t blame the victim, change societal norms – women are all too happy to attack the mistakes that the organisers make, and undermine the message.

Here’s a controversial thought.  Feminists are wasting their time (and anger) attacking the symptoms of inequality.  Whilst women are paid less than men for the same job, whilst the cuts hurt women most, whilst 99% of rapists go free and 1 in 3 women suffers from domestic violence in their lifetime, feminists seem to waste a hell of a lot of time worrying about pink toys for girls in shop windows.  Pink toys for girls are there because people buy them – it’s called a free market.  Pink toys for girls don’t cause discrimination against women.  Most men don’t cause discrimination against women.  I think ALL of the men I know would agree that women deserve equal pay and that rape & violence against women is wrong.  I don’t know what the answer is, but it isn’t to be found in campaigning against pink toys, and it isn’t to be found in attacking the women who try to raise awareness of the bigger issues through demonstrations & marches, but might get their ‘inclusivity’ agenda wrong. 

Somewhere, hidden beneath the bigoted language in Julie Birchall’s defence of Suzanne Moore, and in Suzanne Moore’s original two articles, is a plea to not get caught up in arguments about language.  When Suzanne Moore says “So to be told that I hate transgender people feels a little ... irrelevant”, she is not saying that transgender issues are irrelevant to the debate.  I believe she is saying that there are bigger wars to be fought – we have to fight the system that marginalises us all, not by focusing on our genitals, but by focusing on the causes of the things that oppress us. 

I loved reading Jane Fae’s balanced, bile-free, response to the whole thing this morning.  A piece written from a place of great personal hurt, but without recrimination or hate.   We do, as people, not just as feminists, have to be aware of “the insensitivity to how an audience may feel about an argument and the language used, the idea that it’s all about content and nothing to do with feelings” and yet we also need “to ask everyone spewing forth anger and bile in this context to stop and think about what, exactly you are doing”. Jane quotes Bidisha* who “observed a couple of years back that she did her best to avoid this sort of argument with other feminists, because women as a whole had far greater issues to deal with and didn’t need to be wasting time and energy fighting with one another.”  And we do.  There are a bunch of status-quo misogynistic men rubbing their hands with glee at this latest example of in-fighting, knowing that they are safe, their institutions, their culture, is safe, whilst we demonstrate that we don’t have solidarity, that we aren’t united against them.   

The loud feminists have a bigger responsibility than the rest of us.  They have a platform.  Newspapers and magazines give them a voice.  Their voices are influential.  They do need to be more circumspect in what they are saying, not exclude the already excluded, not marginalise the already marginalised.  They have a privilege which they shouldn’t abuse, which is dangerous when they do abuse.  We’ve seen it with Moran (victim blaming), and now we see it with Burchill too.  What the ‘loud feminists’ need to do is apologise, admit their fallibilities, learn from criticism (even when that criticism feels like cyber-bullying) and turn the anger towards the patriarchy (kyriarchy?) and not against the smaller voices trying to be heard.  We need to demonstrate that we are united, not fragmented.  Because when we are united, when our anger is directed outwards towards the cultures & institutions which oppress us, then we will be invincible and we will make great changes.  Whilst our anger is directed inwards, whilst we are fragmented and divided, we are not changing anything. 

Links to Articles.

Suzanne Moore’s defence of her original mis-placed remark about Brazilian Transsexuals. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/09/dont-care-if-born-woman

Julie Birchall’s defence of Suzanne Moore (which should have a trigger warning for pure hate).  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/13/julie-burchill-suzanne-moore-transsexuals

Jane Fae’s personal view of the events. http://janefae.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/this-is-personal/

LondonFeminist’s Feminism 101. http://londonfeminist.com/site/what-is-a-feminist-anyway/

My plea to Caitlin Moran, who fell off her pedestal with her victim blaming comments late last year: http://musingsofemilyrose.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/dear-caitlin.html?zx=e2406f7186fbf3db (yes, another plug, still so saddened that she hasn’t acknowledged it, even if by blocking me…).

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

Bidisha: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidisha

Dear Caitlin

Dear Caitlin, I loved your book ‘How to be a Woman.’  It made me feel like I could identify as a feminist, that being a feminist didn’t mean I shouldn’t shave my underarms and spout man-hating rhetoric.  I read it and I realised I could say I was a feminist and yet still enjoy painting my nails and caring about my appearance.  I read it and realised that being a feminist really meant I was being a woman.  You wrote in an engaging, self-deprecating, humourous way.  It was accessible, enjoyable and you inspired me.

When other feminists complained that you weren’t inclusive enough, that your point of view was too white-focussed, too you-focussed and that as a result you never should have claimed to be writing for all women with the book’s title, and criticised your comment about ‘not caring’ that you hadn’t been inclusive and represented the experience of women of colour or others, I kind of understood.  The need to always be aware of inclusivity and entitlement within feminism frustrates me because it makes me feel that I am always having to apologise for being myself, for having the privileges in life that I’ve had.  I am white, middle-class and have had an education.  My perspective will always be coloured by my background & experiences, but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be empathetic of others’ experiences.  In a way, the furore that surrounded your comments taught me to be more self-aware, if not apologetic.

But, Caitlin, this time you’ve made me deeply sad.  Your career, the success of your book, have given you a voice, a very loud & influential voice.  And you’ve used it this time to do harm.  I don’t know whether you meant to do harm, but harm you’ve done.  What you said in the interview with Mia Freedman basically boiled down to saying that if a woman wore heels that go clickety clack, she is advertising herself to rapists – that it is her fault.  I’ve tried re-reading the interview, giving you the benefit of the doubt, trying to see some attempted humour (however misguided humour with regard to rape is), but I can’t.  It reads exactly like victim blaming. 

Caitlin, you have a voice, whether you want to have it or not, you have it.  Women listen to you.  And you just told them things that are wrong.

1.       You said that a woman can avoid rape if she doesn’t draw attention to herself with the sound of her heels – and implicit too, in the clothes that she wears.
This is false.  Women are raped in their pyjamas, in the their own home.  Women are raped in jogging trousers.  Women are raped in hijabs.  Women are raped if they’re wearing flats, or running shoes.  Women are not raped by their clothes, they are raped by rapists.

2.       By saying that, you’ve implicitly blamed women for their rape.  You’ve made women feel that, if they were wearing heels, they were the stupid ones, it was partly their fault.  You’ve made it harder for a woman to recover, not to feel shame, to not feel stupid, for something that wasn’t ever a woman’s fault.  Rape is only ever the fault of the rapist.

3.       You’ve also exacerbated the myth that women tell themselves to feel safe – that if they take certain precautions, this horrible thing won’t happen to them.  This is a lie.  The perpetuation of that myth means that society still blames victims.  The reality is that most rapes are not ‘stranger’ rapes, the majority of rapes take place inside victim’s own homes, by someone they know well. 

4.       You basically said that rape is a class thing – that rich women don’t get raped because they can afford a taxi home.  It appears I did take a taxi home, with the rapist.  I have no recollection of that journey, but he came into my home and the mode of transportation was taxi.  And of course, there have also been high profile cases of the cab driver being the rapist.  And, rich women are as at risk as anyone else of being in a relationship with an abuser, or finding out the hard way that one of their so-called friends is an abuser.  Rape is not a class thing.

Caitlin, you have a voice, a loud voice, and people listen to you.  You are lauded as a feminist.  The single-biggest issue facing women today is not unequal pay or everyday sexism.  It is not our right to shave or not shave our legs, underarms or muffs.  The single-biggest issue facing women today is that somewhere between 1 in 3 and 1 in 8 of us will be raped or sexually assaulted in our lifetime.  The single-biggest issue facing women today is that society apportions some of the blame for that rape on the women who were raped.  The single-biggest issue facing women today is that society tries to redefine rape into something lesser, to diminish the horror.  The single-biggest issue facing women today is the rape epidemic. 

Caitlin, you have a voice, a loud voice, and people listen to you.  Please, listen to me.  My voice is only a whisper, but I am begging you – use your voice wisely.  You could do so much to help change the way the world is, to say it is not right that society partially blames me for my rape, to say it is rapists who rape, to say you are sorry for the pain your comments have caused so many who are struggling to get by day by day from a trauma which still lives with them. 

Caitlin, I hope you read this through.  I hope you think on it.  Your book inspired me.  What you said was such a deep disappointment to me, has caused me so many tears of frustration because when someone like you says something like that, I fear the world will never change.  And I simply have to believe the world will one day change, because it cannot go on like this.

Thank you for reading.

[The interview between Caitlin Moran and Mia Freedman is here: http://www.mamamia.com.au/social/mia-freedman-interviews-caitlin-moran/] 

Rape Apologist?

So, yesterday I was accused on Twitter of making excuses for rapists.  Me.  A friend of the rapists.  Well, I know that’s not true, but it did get me thinking. 

It all started with reading these two blogs.

http://www.xojane.com/issues/nice-guys-commit-rape-too by Alyssa Royse of The Good Men Project and,

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/12/08/what-in-holy-hell-is-this/ by Jill of Feminste.

The first is an account by a SlutWalk speaker of what happened when a male friend was accused of rape.  When he told her what had transpired, she confirmed to him that, yes, he had raped the woman.  (Girl is flirtatious, drinks, ends up in bed with man; he ‘has sex’ with her while she’s sleeping.  Pretty clear-cut.  She wasn’t conscious to give consent).  The writer tries to make sense of the ‘social intercourse’ that had seemed destined to become ‘sexual intercourse’ and how a ‘nice man’ could make such a mistake.

The second blog dismisses the first as attempting to make excuses for the ‘nice man’ and is clear that the situation could only ever have been rape.

I agree.  It was rape.  The ‘nice man’, however ‘nice’ he might be in other aspects of his life, should have known that to have sex with a sleeping person who has not explicitly said ‘hey, I’d love it if whilst I’m asleep you woke me with your cock inside me, that’d be really hot’, is rape. 

But, what I said on Twitter was this:

[Original tweet linking the Feminste blog] was really shocked by that story too. Having “sex” with a sleeping person is NOT SEX!

[Me] agree. But also agree that it's a problem that so many men seem to not understand what rape is

[Twitter] a woman’s body as a thing to use. Lots of men get that, why make excuses for those who don’t?

[Me] not making excuses. But there's a lot of education to be done to stop men raping. Too many don't >

[Me] don't seem to know when they've raped. That has to stop

[Twitter] another person’s body. Not sex. Not cooperative. Never ok. Not due to lack of education.

[Me] I agree. Never ok. Was rape. But he apparently didn't know that. Hence need for education.  

[Twitter] you believe a rapist when he says he didn’t know it was rape? This must be a joke, seriously.

[Me] I am not defending a rapist. I am saying there is a societal problem in understanding what rape is

The conversation was brought to a halt only by my admitting that I wondered if the man who raped me had realised he’d done it at the time.  (As an aside, I think he must have known.  Not only was I mostly passed out comatose, but the violence was extreme (over 4 years on I can still see the remains of the bruising on my thigh) and the vaginal & anal penetration by espresso machine hub isn’t on the menu for your normal, run of the mill, drunken fumble).  But, I did spend many years wondering about it, and when I wrote about it on this blog (see, http://musingsofemilyrose.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/triggered.html Triggered), a Twitter friend RT’d with the words, ‘this man doesn’t know he’s a rapist.’  (As a further aside, it was interesting that the other party pulled out of the conversation, and very civilly, telling me to take care and sending hugs, only when I revealed myself as rape survivor.  Does that make my opinion count for more?  It shouldn’t, I don’t think).

And perhaps the medium of 140 characters is really not enough to engage in a conversation on this. But I absolutely, totally, think that one of the only ways out of this rape epidemic where somewhere between 1 in 3 and 1 in 8 women will experience rape or sexual assault in their lifetime (dependent on which study you pick) is to educate men and society at large as to what rape is.  To be really clear, so there never is any doubt.  So that, instead of the adverts that tell us not to get into an unbooked minicab, there are adverts that spell out, in the simplest of terms, that having sex when consent isn’t enthusiastic & explicit is rape. 

‘She kissed me.  Now she’s asleep next to me.  That means I can have sex with her? NO! That’s rape.’ 

‘If I get her drunk, she won’t be able to say ‘no’.  NO! That’s rape.’ 

‘She’s wearing a really sexy outfit, that means she wants me to, right?  NO! That’s rape.’

Now, these messages may be clear to most of you already.  But, the evidence is that a lot of people simply don’t believe them, know them, or understand them.  Politicians, the media, and much of society do not appear to understand rape.  If they did, there would not be an apparent hierarchy of types of rape, from ‘bad sexual etiquette’ (George Galloway), to date rape, to marital rape, to legitimate rape (Todd Aiken), to forcible rape (pretty much any fundamentalist republican), to stranger rape (which is the minicab ad’s target).   But, rape is rape is rape.  And that’s not because of the circumstances under which the rape happened.  That’s because the impact of the rape on the victim takes no account of the circumstances in which it happened; whether the rape happened at knifepoint by a stranger in a dark alley, or in your own home by someone you knew, from a mental health point of view, the impact on the victim can be just as severe and long-standing.

I believe there are two types of rapist, but not two types of rape.  I believe there are some people out there who are sociopaths (and this isn’t to say that all sociopaths are rapists), but there are some people who intend to rape.  They choose a target, and they engineer circumstances to get what they want.  These are the people who we can try to protect against by attempting not to be in harm’s way (i.e. not walking down a dark alley alone, not getting into an unlicensed cab), but who we may not be able to avoid, no matter what we do to protect ourselves.  These people truly are monsters, although they probably don’t appear that way to the rest of the world.  Some of them probably do appear to be ‘nice guys’.

But, I don’t believe that there are that many monsters in the world.  Not enough to justify the statistics of between 1 in 3 or 1 in 8 women experiencing rape or sexual assault in their lifetime.  Either each monster is raping several hundred women, or there is another factor at play.

And I think that is the other type of rapist.  This is the rapist who if he stopped and thought about it, would realise it was rape.  The rapist who is not so much after power, but after sex.  If he questioned the rape culture around us which makes jokes out of rape ‘it’s not rape if you yell surprise first’ (!!!), or the recently pulled Virgin Mobile US ad ‘is it a necklace or chloroform?’, or the ‘it is never acceptable to wear your girlfriend/mothers/victim’s socks’ (courtesy of FHM), if he questioned his behaviour, then he would know that what he was doing was rape.  Perhaps these are the accidental rapists, who try their luck one night, who think they are entitled to sex, who cross the line without consent.  They did not perhaps set out to rape, but they did rape.  Please do not misunderstand me, I am not making excuses for them, rape is rape is rape.  And the impact on the survivor can be just as debilitating, sometimes more so, because when it appears that there are mixed signals it is hard to forgive yourself for possibly giving the wrong signal, as well as a break-down of trust.  I am not attempting to diminish the crime.  What I’m saying is, perhaps this is the type of rape that as a society we can work together on getting reduced, happening less often, becoming more rare.

When I spoke at SlutWalk this year, I said we need to have an open, honest dialogue about sex, and about enthusiastic consent.  Rape, and rapists, do deserve to be demonised.  But, it’s happening too often to just demonise the act and the perpetrator.  We have to work towards a solution, and I believe that solution lies in education – not in the education of telling women how to protect themselves, but in the education of telling men how to be certain of consent, and in the education of being really clear that when enthusiastic consent is not explicitly given, that then it is rape.

But, perhaps I’m wrong.  Perhaps I am being manipulated somehow. The Twitter conversation ended as follows (after I outed myself as a rape survivor):

[Twitter] look, I’m very sorry for that, and I wish the best for you, but men have to do their own work to…

…be good people and they are fully capable of it. Pointing the finger at lack of education is…

…great in some ways because we have a shitty system for that, but also we need to acknowledge…

…that men often manipulate perfectly in order to get away with things. I’ve been there

anyway big hugs to you and all the best. Signing off now, take care.

I remember also though, this Jezebel article from July 2012 http://jezebel.com/5929544/rapists-explain-themselves-on-reddit-and-we-should-listen?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_twitter&utm_source=jezebel_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow which had rapists explaining what had happened.  It’s a difficult read, but it seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, that a properly thought-through campaign of re-education about sex & consent really could do some good in preventing many from being rapists, and preventing many from being raped.

I know that some will think I am a rape apologist.  But I know that I am not.

Smoke without Fire?

I haven’t been following the Jimmy Saville scandal too closely, but it is impossible to avoid it completely.  It seems an obvious thing to say, but paedophilia is one of the most disturbing crimes that exist, if not the most disturbing.  I was raped as an adult, with an adult’s faculties to process what happened, and it has seriously impacted my life.  Fucked up is an accurate description.  When I try to think how I would have coped with that kind of violation as a child, I am overcome with despair for those that have suffered in that way.  Which explains why I haven’t been following it too closely.

What has become clear however, is that Saville was not just a serial offender, or that times were just different ‘back then.’  What has become clear is that the allegations that were made at the time, the rumours that did exist at the time, were all systematically ignored or brushed aside by those in authority, at the BBC, and elsewhere.  It was institutionalised rape culture.

This isn’t just because of who Saville was; a top TV personality with a cult following.  We are all fooling ourselves if we think this behaviour is limited to Saville, or limited to a problem at the BBC.  It is everywhere.  When someone is popular, well-liked, no-one wants to believe they can also be evil.  The Assange case has illustrated this as well; because he has done good with WikiLeaks, his allies & supporters are too keen to deride and undermine the allegations of rape, insisting it was not rape (bad sexual etiquette), and instead is a conspiracy aimed at destroying WikiLeaks. 

We are conditioned to give the benefit of the doubt to the accused.  Innocent until proven guilty is the mantra at the heart of our justice system.  During the Justin Lee Collins trial I was horrified to see how many people were defending him, casting dispersions on the word of his ex-girlfriend, calling her a liar.  This is so common when it comes to sex crimes, when the evidence so often comes down to the only two people present.  The MumsNet #IBelieveYou campaign which went viral earlier this year was so important, and it still is.  We must must must start to believe the victim first, before the evidence, to give victims a safe environment in which to come forward. 

Rape is usually a crime perpetrated by those known to the victim.  Circles of friends, or families can be torn apart by accusations, and it is more convenient, easier, to believe the person you liked, or loved, is not also an evil monster.  Rapists can be the popular guy, the one who you think could get any girl he wanted, and probably does, most of the time.  We have to start being able to believe the worst of people, not the best.  We have to believe the accuser.  For all his lifetime Jimmy Saville’s crimes went unpunished.  We have to start to believe the old adage, no smoke without fire.   

Conversations with Friends

This one comes with a trigger warning.

This blog has been inspired by conversations with friends.  Close friends.  Friends I love dearly.  Friends who know me, what I’ve been through, what I’m going through, who love me, who I consider allies.  But friends who don’t seem to quite get it.  Yet.  And hence this blog.

First, I had a conversation with a friend who didn’t think that it was possible to be forced to give a blow job. Because you can always bite, can’t you? So, it’s just not possible to be forced. 

Second, I had a conversation with a friend who thinks that we need to teach young girls and women to protect themselves.  Because if you don’t want your car broken into, we lock it, don’t we? If we leave our car unlocked (or our house doors open), we’re just asking for it, really, and whilst we can blame the thief, we also need to accept that we were silly to be so trusting, and not expect to be robbed.

Well, to both I say: bullshit.

The fact that these opinions come from friends, are not from Daily Mail readers, and aren’t from small-minded misogynist pricks writing on the comments section of News International articles, it makes them harder to take.  It really brings home the message that there is such a long way to go in addressing rape culture, fundamentally a very long way to go.

First, blow-jobs.  A man, bigger than you, stronger than you, sticking his cock into your mouth.  Holding your head there, jamming into you.  Your instinct is to try to breathe, but you can’t.  If biting even comes into your mind, he’s already suffocating you, what will he do if you do that to him?  The instinct is to live.  Biting didn’t come into my mind.  He’d already beaten any fight out of me, and I was ready to do anything to please him, to get him to cum, so that he might stop, so that he might leave. 

People often talk about fight or flight.  Hardly ever does anyone talk about freeze.  It can’t be rape if you didn’t do something to stop it?  Bullshit.  Freeze is a legitimate survival response, the body shuts down, the mind shuts down, it’s a way of dealing with the trauma of the violence being done.  And there is also then acquiescence.  Doing what needs to be done to get it over with.  To get out of it alive.  In cases of rape, flight is hardly ever possible; you’re already pinned down by someone bigger and stronger.  Fight might be attempted, but, again the bigger/stronger issue can mean that is short-lived.  After that, really, the only options for the body to try to stay protected is freeze and/or acquiescence.  People need to understand that.  It’s the basics.

Second, protect yourself.  All the messages in society about rape focus on what women can do to protect themselves.  The taxi-ad on the underground – if it’s not booked, it’s just a stranger’s car.  Messages in the media about drinking, about what you wear.  Well, women get raped in hijabs.  Women get raped when jogging in their tracksuits.  Watch your drink, but you never know, it might have been the barman who spiked it, and he might have spiked the glass of water you wanted so you weren’t drinking too much.  Most rapes aren’t stranger rapes, most rapes aren’t random pick-ups in bars.  Most rapists are known to the victim.  They are the husband, the lover, the friend, the colleague, someone in their close social circle.  You can lock yourself up like you lock up your car, wear polo necks, drink only soft drinks, never go out, and you cannot protect yourself from being raped. 

Messages that say you can protect yourself do two things: they give a false sense of security and make us believe that if someone is so ‘unlucky’ as to get raped, they must have done something to bring it on themselves.  And they mean that the victim goes through life believing that they were somehow to blame.  Messages that say you must do everything you can to protect against rape are the main contributor to victim blaming and rape culture.  Victim blaming means that juries don’t convict.  Victim blaming creates a stigma about rape. 

When I was raped, I blamed myself.  Because I’d been drinking.  Because I froze and stopped fighting.  Some of my so-called friends reinforced this – if I couldn’t remember everything, how could I be sure that I hadn’t consented? (um, because I hadn’t, and was not anyway in a state to consent), how could I be certain that it was rape? (um, because my body bore the marks of a really vicious beating and my mind was in turmoil), it couldn’t be rape because I hadn’t gone to the police straight away (um, because I didn’t think it would do any good – and it didn’t, as it turned out). 

Messages that say you can protect yourself reinforce the view that rape is something that if you are careful you can avoid.  These messages are very important for people to feel safe.  When rape is so prevalent, when up to 1 in 3 women will be raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetime, it is critically important for society to create myths to make people feel safe, to feel that it just won’t happen to them.  Because being in fear of being raped is not a way to live.  But, these messages will only give a false sense of security.   They won’t change the 1 in 3 statistic.  The only thing that will change the 1 in 3 statistic, and start to end the epidemic, is the message don’t rape. 

We never say don’t rape.  We even seem to have a very mixed up, uncertain view of what constitutes rape.  The joke, it’s not rape if you say surprise first, kind of sums it up.  George Galloway talking about ‘being in the sex game’, Ken Clarke saying some rapes are more serious than others.  The misunderstanding that you can’t be forced to give a blow job.  Rape is rarely neat, a stranger with a knife jumping out from behind a bush as you walk home.  Rape happens whenever someone is penetrated against their will. 

We have to teach consent.  The message needs to be ‘do you have consent’, not ‘don’t wear a short skirt because if you do, you’re fair game’.   Until the consent message is the prevalent one in society, and not the protection message, we will never change rape culture, we will never reduce rape, we will never end victim blaming, and we will never achieve justice for rape survivors.  

Bad Romance?

Friends.  Yes, it’s lovely when they can be honest with you, and tell you what they really think.  But, sometimes, I really wish they would keep their honesty to themselves.  I know I deserve someone who wants only me, who loves me for me, who wants to be with me, for who I am, and with no-one else.  But, in the absence of that person, am I supposed to be alone?

Being alone sucks.  Being alone and single and going out with friends who are all loved up, secure, happy, feeling like a wallflower, does nothing for the self-esteem.  Being single is like being unemployed. I’ve been both.  Being unemployed makes you lose confidence in yourself, you wonder if you were ever any good at what you did, whether you could ever cut it again, whether it was all just bollocks and what you used to be good at was just bullshitting your way through, and now everyone can see right through you.  That’s why you’re not getting interviews, or the job offers.  Being single is the same.  You feel unattractive, your sexuality is drained out of you, all the insecurities about whether you were any good at sex are front and centre, you feel needy, you fear coming across as desperate, you start to get used to not being sexual, to not deserving love, to being alone.

And being alone, as I said, totally sucks.  Particularly for someone prone to internalising, prone to feeling insecure, prone to the voice in the head which says you’re not good enough to be loved, that you’re destined to stay alone forever.  There’s an easy spiral into self-hatred, into despair, into believing the voice.  And then, you are those things: needy, desperate.

So, yes, I’m not waiting around for Mr. or Ms. Fucking Perfect.  I don’t think s/he exists anyway.  I don’t believe in forever anymore.  My marriage was supposed to be forever.  Then I fell in love with someone who wasn’t ever supposed to want to be married, but he is now.  I think that human beings are meant to love more than one person, that sometimes, those people are loved concurrently, and that might be at odds with the societal norms of monogamy and Mills & Boon romances and the fairy tales of our childhoods of happy ever after, but it’s the truth of life.  Life is far from a fairy tale.  It’s messy, complex, and complicated.  Bad things happen to good people, good things happen for no reason, and chaos reigns supreme. 

So, now I love others.  And they can’t give me 24/7, and I don’t even know if they could if I could cope with that, the idea of it is suffocating, stifling, strangulation.  I want to be free to explore, to experiment, to breathe.  The people I love, the people I play with, they make me feel alive.  They make me feel sexual, sensuous, desirable.  Desperate isn’t on the agenda. 

Yes, I’m alone a lot of the time.  And even sometimes lonely.  But I have times to look forward to with people who are really special to me, who give me some of what I need, if not always what I want.  I’m not their main priority, but I am important to them.  And, like the song says, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try real hard, you might get what you need.

Well, I’m trying, real hard.  Different needs, fulfilled by different people.  You can judge me, you can say I’m ‘that woman’ and I deserve to be unhappy because I’m fucking people who aren’t supposed to be free to fuck people.  But being that woman makes me happy, and there isn’t much in my life that makes me happy.  And whilst I can, I’m going to take the happy.