Saturday 21 November 2015

Why we need to talk about "that word": Asking For It and the attitude towards rape and young women

TRIGGER WARNING: In case you failed to notice the word 'rape' in the title, I'm going to talk about rape. If that's triggering for you then don't read this.


The word 'rape' has a strange effect on the world. If someone says the word aloud, it's usually spoken about in a certain tone, a hush as if the speaker is frightened that being heard to say it will bring something bad to them. It's as if the speaker is somehow tainted by mere association. It isn't a word that people like to use at all. They'd rather say anything else, sometimes they'd rather suggest that nothing non-consensual occurred so that they don't have to say that word and bring its taint anywhere near them. It's something that may be talked about in the news, on TV, on the radio and in newspapers but for most people it's still something to be discussed in hushed tones, provided that it's talked about at all. Yet even in the media that are more inclined to broach the subject, the word 'rape' may not feature in their vocabulary. It might be called 'sexual assault' or 'non-consensual sex' but the word 'rape' not feature at all. It is a taboo word, a dirty word and so what are people supposed to think about the subject when it's spoken about in this way?

If the word 'rape' is used, it often carries particular connotations: victimisation, violence, but most disturbingly, lies. If a woman comes forward about having been raped then she is "claiming" that such a thing happened. If she was not a "good girl", if she liked to drink, or dress a certain way, or liked to have sex, then she is probably "crying" rape, in the same way that the boy cried wolf. As the victim Emma O'Donovan in Louise O'Neill's Asking For It says, "I am a liar until I am proven honest." There is a perception that the victim must be in the wrong and must be lying about being at fault or else they are lying about rape having taken place at all.

Women claim to have been raped if they regret a one-night stand or if they want attention; this is what our society has told us. Oh, it condemns rape, of course! Provided that it's unprovoked and that the woman is innocent. Society would never want a woman to be raped, would never want her to be violated but who can prove when rape is rape? If it isn't committed by a stranger then there is automatically doubt. Why is it that men are automatically held as innocent or as telling the truth while women have their claims mistrusted and they are considered the guilty party?

If you are a clear victim, if you were good and didn't provoke the rape with your behaviour or with your way of dress then the mob will cry out for the blood of your rapist. If you are not a clear victim, whether you were not good by society's standards, if you are seen as having been "asking for it" or it was done by someone close to you, a friend or a friend of a friend then the mob will cry out for your blood.

It is unsurprising that there is a low conviction rate for rape in this country. If a rapist can be prosecuted at all, it's a small miracle but if one gets that far then there is still a high chance that a rapist may get off. If the victim status of the victim can be reduced then the rapist may suddenly become blameless. It is unsurprising that women are reluctant to come forward. Coming forward means testifying and testifying means that you could be violated once more, not because you have to relive what happened but because you could be turned into the one in the wrong. It becomes the woman's fault and evidence is brought in against her: how many men she's slept with, how free she was with giving sexual favours, how she acted, how she dressed, how much she drank. It is wrong on so many levels that a victim can be blamed for something that is not their fault.

Our society is quick to blame the victims. Adults shake their heads at the way that young people act today, complain that the girls are worse then the boys, that they have no respect. What can they expect going around dressed like that? That is the way young women are perceived. Sure, boys will be boys. Who can blame them if they take what is obviously supposed to be there for the taking? It's a sick attitude and it's an attitude that countless people have. They blame them for their stupidity and say that they should have known better. But how is it that society has come to this conclusion? Why is it so quick to place blame on young women and excuse young men?

Louise O'Neill's book is incredibly important in bringing these attitudes to light, in exposing them for everyone to see in a way that just cannot be ignored. There have been complaints of course. I have listened to them talked about in interviews, have read reviews and have been stunned by the things that people have had to complain about. Emma isn't a likeable character, she isn't relatable. It's a complaint that left me shocked. You don't like her so you can't feel sorry for her? No. You don't like her so you can think that she deserved what happened to her? No. It is strange that her personality is what some people have focused on and worse still, on a personality that is in fact far more complex than it appears at first glance. I wondered when I read it if I had some unique ability to read between the lines because I study English or if the people who read it were incredibly shallow-minded. Perhaps that comes across as offensive to people who held the view that Emma wasn't likeable but then I find it offensive that they could think that way. Whether you like her or not isn't relevant to anything. She isn't there for you to like or dislike. To judge her based on what you see of her personality is the same as judging her by her looks.

If you managed to read this book without picking up on the many complexities of this character then I feel incredibly sorry for you. I'm sorry that you couldn't pick up on her insecurities and the way she tried to copy the women she saw around her like her own mother and her friend's mother, Karen. I'm sorry that you couldn't see what she saw: that she was expected to act a certain way because of how she looked and also because she was a woman.

I am a trans man. I have never been a girl, have never been a woman but for a long time I was treated as one and expected to be one and so I thought I was one. I have grown up in a world of heteronormativity, where I was expected to want to attract guys because I was female and where I was supposed to look at myself based on the way that other people treated me. There is the idea that women and girls are there for men. Dolls, sex toys, playthings, whatever way you want to look at it, there is an expectation that they will have sex with men. There is an expectation that they will be flattered that a man pays attention to them. If a man whistles at you, or makes remarks about your body, or forces himself upon you then you should be grateful that he was attracted to you enough to do so. I have experienced the uneasiness, the feeling of having your skin crawl when a man looks at you as if you are there to be aesthetically pleasing, as if you are something inanimate rather than a person. It always made me ill, and it still does as unfortunately people still identify me as female upon seeing me. I used to think that there was something wrong with me, that I should feel happy that I was obviously a woman because why else would men want to beep car horns at me? Instead, I usually wanted to throw up and I was usually deathly afraid that they would want to do more than look. I grew up in a world where you had to appeal to men and so your self-worth was determined by them. If thirty men slept with you then you were obviously very attractive and you were doing things right.

When you grow up in a society where this sort of thing that girls have to deal with then it is unsurprising that women might dress and act a certain way to impress them or that they might do things that they actually don't want to do. That does not mean that they are there to be raped. When you take this sort of thing into account then you cannot judge Emma by her personality and her actions, which are so clearly shaped by the society we live in today.

Consent is something that our society also seems to have trouble comprehending. To use a very Irish example, if you ask someone if they want a cup of tea and they say yes and then change their mind and say no, you wouldn't give them a cup of tea. If a woman gives consent and then retracts it then you cannot have sex with her. Once the consent is gone, you are committing rape. If you are never given consent in the first place then you're committing rape and the same goes if consent was given at some time in the past but hasn't been given now. It's not just regarding sex though that people can't seem to wrap their heads around consent. People think it's perfectly acceptable to do certain things without asking such as inappropriately touching or kissing someone. If you don't think that this sort of thing happens then I both envy your innocence and pity your naivety.

I have a friend who went to a party. She may have been drinking but that's aside from the point. She was in a state of mind to be able to give consent or refuse it. A guy came onto her and she made it clear that she wasn't interested on more than one occasion over the course of the night. Very clear. She didn't try to let him down gently or be subtle about it, she told him clearly and firmly that no, she was not interested in him. However, despite this when she was leaving he asked if he could speak to her for a moment. So she moved off to one side to talk to him and he slammed her into the wall and started kissing her. No warning, nothing of the sort, he quite literally pounced. He got incredibly offended when she pushed him off as if kissing her was a trivial thing that she shouldn't get worked up over. Welcome to our society.

Perhaps some people will argue that it's only young lads or boys these days (God help us if that's your logic seeing as they're the next generation) but older men can act incredibly inappropriately too. I didn't fail to notice that in the book Emma regrets wearing a particular item of clothing because of the way a friend of her father's looks at her. Older men are just as inclined to look at her in that desiring way, if not more so, and that's yet another accurate observation on Louise O'Neill's part. I have yet another anecdote about a girl I know. She found herself working as a waitress and a middle-aged man came onto her at work one day. She was both creeped out and frightened when he told her to write her number on his receipt. She felt that she couldn't just flatly tell him no, that he was being inappropriate and making her uncomfortable. Instead, she had to try to laugh it off and let him think that she couldn't because she was in work. She had to placate him. She felt unsafe.

It's something that appears again and again, the feeling of unsafety. That's why I know girls who feel that they can't have fun unless they drink. They can't have fun because they'd be too aware of being looked at and having to act a certain way and so they drink not to notice. They drink so they don't come across as stuck-up or frigid or boring. They drink so they don't have to go mad with thinking and feeling self-conscious. We also have a drinking culture in Ireland so if you don't drink, there's clearly something wrong with you. And then people wonder why Irish young people get so drunk.

I am going off on a bit of a rant and I have done a great deal of talking about general things concerning rape and the perception of women and so on. However, it is entirely relevant to the book because Asking For It comes out of all these things. If these things didn't exist then you wouldn't have this book.

So concerning the book... unless you've been living under a rock and don't know that this book involves rape then there isn't such a thing as spoilers if you haven't read it. There is a brutal and graphic gang rape that commences that the victim doesn't recall because she was very drunk and she'd taken drugs. Now my reasoning is that Emma is not to blame just because she took drugs and alcohol. In fact, as she did these things it actually adds to her victimisation. She's too out of it to give consent, she doesn't have the ability to say either yes or no. Saying nothing is not the same as saying yes. The way that she was dressed does not justify her being raped. The idea that someone rapes a girl and says they couldn't help themselves is utter bullshit. You bloody well could help it, you just chose to go ahead and do it anyway. This idea that a girl is so attractive that you can't really blame someone for raping them is the worst thing I've ever come across as if it's a crime of passion, like murder can be. I don't care about your reasons, you did it, it's inexcusable.

It's another form of victim blaming. You're too pretty so you made me do it. It's something I've come across before in Tess of the D'Urbervilles when Tess is told that her looks drove Alec D'Urberville to lust after her and so it was her fault. It also appeared in the film, The Magdalene Sisters, where one of the girls is sent away because her cousin rapes her and she is blamed for being a temptation. In the same way that they are seen as temptresses, in the book, Emma likens herself to Eve following her rape as she places the blame of the boys' "sin" upon herself as Eve led Adam into temptation. Such a connection between Eve, other women and temptation of men is a very common one and it is unsurprising that O'Neill uses it. It's something that everyone knows.

This is the second of O'Neill's books to draw a connection between dolls, particularly Barbie dolls, and women. The black cover of Only Ever Yours features a Barbie doll and within the book, the protagonist freida finds a Barbie book in her early years in the school. The girls in the book are also treated as dolls and playthings. The cover of Asking For It also features doll parts, in particular the legs. Within the book, Emma frequently refers to herself as having been reduced to doll parts and very early in the book, she makes reference to a night when she slept with a boy because it was easier than resisting and how she tripped over a headless Barbie. Now there are only two explicit references to Barbies, one in each book, but yet given the way the girls in both books are regarded, I think it should be considered that every reference to dolls is a reference to Barbies. Why? Barbies are a very particular kind of doll. They have certain (unrealistic) proportions that seem to be designed to show a certain kind of female attractiveness, they can be manipulated quite easily and they're also a sexual kind of doll that everyone is familiar with. Some children play with Bratz or other dolls but everyone knows what a Barbie is. Something that I know seems to fascinate many children, not just boys either, is the fact that you can strip them. You can strip a Barbie down to its knickers. I know many people who would point to the plastic breasts and try to find a way to take off the knickers despite the fact that such a thing isn't possible. I could not tell you what happens if you strip a Bratz doll and I haven't seen a fascination with stripping them but yet Barbies are associated with nakedness as well as being easy to manipulate. Hence, I call them sexual and hence they are something I think describes the physical representations of female characters in both books.

Now, left to my own devices, I could ramble on and one forever and ever about rape culture, the perception of women, gender performativity and so on, it's probably best if I don't. I will say that we need to change our attitudes to rape. I will say that we have to get it out of our heads that rape is something that only affects women and that women can't rape men. I will also say that it's a word that we should be able to use without a particular kind of stigma attached to it. It's funny (not in a ha ha kind of way) that if you say someone is raped that they'll automatically question whether the victim did something to bring it on or not. Even if you're "good", there can still be judgments like "Why did you let it happen?" and "Why didn't you fight back?" If you say someone was raped, people will judge them, despite the fact it isn't their fault. If you say that someone has HIV or AIDS, the same sort of judgmental attitude prevails. Obviously they brought it on themselves. They can't have gotten it from being raped, getting an infected blood transfusion, coming into contact with contaminated blood or been born with it. Obviously they had unprotected sex, or slept around or did drugs. I find it strange that I can draw a similar connection between those two different things because of the way people react when you name them.

Just a thought to finish up on. If a woman is raped then her sexual history can be brought up in court to see if she was promiscuous and therefore could be lying or have given the impression of being "easy". Why is a similar thing not possible to pull up for rapists to see if there's anything in their sexual history that shows that they've done anything inappropriate in the past?

I might write about something happy at some stage, we'll see but I felt like this was important.

Until I write again,

Max