It’s funny in a horrifying I might start crying kind of way to think about how many times I’ve experienced extreme sexism/misogyny from perfect strangers. I’m always boggled at how willing people are to excuse their behavior & claim I should have been nicer, or that they’re sick and don’t know any better. I remember a guy tried to grab me on an empty train car in high school, I kicked the shit out of him & ran like hell. For a host of reasons I was afraid to tell my parents about what happened, but when I told some friends about it the next day I remember a girl I only kind of knew shutting down the victim blaming comments by saying “Girls get raped on the train.” and that the way she said it was so *knowing* you know? I never asked for her story. She didn’t offer it either. But then I was already a survivor so I guess I didn’t need it to understand.
Fast forward a few years from that age & I can tell you a dozen more “extreme” stories that happened in between, but the ones that stick out most all have a theme of me being engaged in my life when misogyny dropped in for a visit. There was the guy in Germany who tried to trap me in a dark tunnel with his car (I jumped on the hood & ran like my life depended on it, maybe it did) and there was no conversation between us. He yelled at me in German from a moving car then drove around to bar my way. There was the guy that followed me home from the store one night telling me that he could be a rapist. He didn’t speak to me in the store & our conversation outside consisted of me walking past him & him yelling at me that I was a stuck up bitch. The guy that called me everything but a child of God, because I wouldn’t buy his CD came at me on a bus & no one (including his friend) said shit to stop him. Or the group of men who surrounded me while I was walking with my child that had to be backed off by a neighbor with a gun.
How many times exactly does someone have to be insulted, harassed, or terrorized before the conversation can be about the person who accosted them & not about what else they could have done? Should have done? How many incidents (all with different people, different settings, different responses) does it take before the discussion is about ways to stop the harassers & not ways to respond to them so that they maybe, possibly, if you’re lucky won’t escalate? When do we talk about the culture that not only permits these behaviors, but encourages them & punishes victims for being wary of new people after years of bad experiences? When do we talk about why women are cautioned to be nice, to be patient, to be careful, but never told it is okay to say no & mean it without fear of repercussions? Oh right, those are all hard topics for hard days & folks would rather blame victims than address problems.
On Street Harassment, Victim Blaming & Life in My Skin — Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman
Was “Girls get raped on the train.” meant as “That’s what you get for taking the train” or “When you take the train, be prepared to defend yourself”?
Overall the conversation needs to be about the people doing violence – and the people who stand idly by and do nothing, because they seem to think that doing violence is an acceptable cultural norm.
I do not, though, see it as blaming the victim to tell them “We live in a culture that has violence in it. You need to learn how to deal with that.” Working to change the acceptability of people committing such acts is laudable and it should be something everyone takes part in, especially if you are raising a child. But consider whether you want you or your child to become a martyr. Dealing with it could involve avoiding situations where people could become violent. Dealing with it could involve arming oneself with knowledge or actual armament. Or, a mix of these things. Different things work for different people. They are all valid approaches, but unless you want to be a martyr you have to make sure you’ve selected an approach that will actually work.
I’m not clear on what you mean by “repercussions”. Do you mean as in “if you say ‘No’ to a guy, there could be a situation where he tries to force you” or do you mean “you should never have put yourself in a situation where you had to worry about what would happen if you say ‘No’, so it’s your fault”? It’s common sense to tell someone the former and that they should be prepared for it. But the latter makes no sense to me (although I know that there are people out there who hold that viewpoint) because unfortunately it’s impossible to predict all the situations where such a thing can occur. You’d have to never walk into a bar or a concert.
This is a good post.
But when you ask why we talk about prevention from a victim angle sometimes:
When you’re talking about men who are trapping women in tunnels with a car (and that is some scary shit; I’m glad you’re ok) I’m not really sure if we can change them. That behavior is so far over the line that it can’t really be prevented by normal means.
People don’t commit violent stranger rape because they missed this month’s “be nice to neighbors” meeting. They do it because they have acquired some sort of major sociopathic evilness that is likely to continue until they end up in jail, or dead. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
So when we talk about avoiding those extreme cases we often end up focusing on the potential victim. This IS NOT because it’s the victim’s fault (it isn’t!) and IS NOT because it should be the victim’s responsibility (it shouldn’t!) We do that because in extreme cases the potential victim is the only rational player in the interaction, and is therefore the only one whose behavior can be changed in advance by normal means.
Over the course of their lives, my daughters are likely to have some sort of attempted assault against them. If they knew in advance, they could prevent it–but they don’t. They can, however, try to acquire some sort of ability and knowledge that might assist them in avoiding or defending against any assault.
That’s why there is such a big difference between extreme and non extreme harassment.
In the context of “normal” harassment committed by reasonably-rational harassers, it makes a lot more sense to focus on stopping the harassers. A great example would be young school-aged children, who are theoretically pretty amenable to training and teaching.
But still, there are a gazillion of them, and it’d be virtually impossible to ensure that none of them will be uneducated. So even though my kids go to a school where harassment is “not OK” I don’t trust that it will never occur. And so I will teach my kids to deal with harassment properly and safely: not because it’s their fault (that’s a big part of what I teach) but because even the best prevention won’t get everything.
As I reread that, it isn’t coming across correctly.
I think it’s incredibly important to attempt to stop harassment whenever possible, whether of the extreme or less extreme variety. And i think karnythia’s right that it is easier to talk about the victims, largely because then we’re dealing with people who are reasonable and rational. And that is more pleasant for us.
I agree that it’s tempting to end up focusing on victim training, and I agree that this is not nearly enough to stop the problem overall.
A lot of objectionable stuff happens in the presence of witnesses. We have to speak up. It can be weird if the situation hasn’t yet escalated into an extreme threat. I mean, it’s entirely possible that you may interfere in a situation that really is none of your business. Obviously I’m not talking about being cornered by a guy in a car. But it’s likely that if you say something when a man and woman are arguing, both of them will tell you to shut up.
So I guess I have to not care about that, to be able to take being yelled at. I mean, even if the situation isn’t going to escalate (and how can I predict that?), I’ve disrupted the dynamic a little, and maybe defused it. So then I think, maybe I can defuse it more obliquely. This is when it helps to be an older woman, because no one is surprised when an older woman acts goofy. Like I can ask what time it is, or inquire about directions, or anything that will break up the action a little, give me time to assess things, give them time to back down.
I’m getting too specific there. What I mean is that all of us have to go on the record. When men are talking among themselves, and one of them starts talking or boasting in a nasty way, other guys (most guys, in fact) may think, “Jeez, what an ignorant asshole” – well, they need to speak up with as much emphasis as the situation warrants. It’s pervasive and exhausting and dispiriting, for sure. I remember visiting my elderly parents once. We watched a DVD – I think it was called “1600”, some thriller that opened with a beautiful woman being strangled to death on a shiny conference room table. I said, “OMG, that’s disgusting”. My mother, intending to calm or comfort me, immediately said, “Oh honey, it’s okay. She was kind of asking for it”. (So did I jump up and edumacate my parents? Nah. It was just the three of us.)
Look. If tomorrow morning we woke up to a world in which the idea of misogynistic attacks were as disgusting anything Jeffrey Dahmer did, we would hardly recognize the world. It would be that different. I remember reading a historical novel once. It was set way way back, almost pre-history. There was a conclave of various tribes and clans. At one point a woman rushes into a gathering, furious, yelling, pointing at a man from another clan: “He used me like a wife!” She was outraged. In her tribe, women could be wives, men could be husbands, they could do those things together. But the idea of using a woman as a wife without her consent? Disgusting and all but unthinkable.
As a society, we’re not nearly disgusted enough by such misuse of power. We’ve got to protect ourselves, help each other, speak up, and do everything we can to ostracize offenders. We have to do our best to change what is considered acceptable. If we could get to the point where the typical reaction to hearing about a rape is “Jeez, that’s awful” instead of “Well, was it rape or rape-rape?”, we’d be witnessing progress.
When I was a young girl, I’d do everything I could to avoid walking or riding my bike near the firehouse. Why? Because the firemen back then considered it good fun to whistle, comment, or make smacking noises. At me. A 12 year-old neighborhood girl. Yes, I grew up being wary of (and disgusted by) firemen. I know how weird that sounds. Attitudes don’t want to change, but they can.
Karnythia, I’m being reflective here, not to mention verbose. I hope you know that I’m as supportive as I know how to be, but if anything in my comment bugs you, please feel free to delete it.
RonF- your first comment is misreading the original post. She said that “girls get raped on the train” was said to SHUT DOWN the victim blaming, not to perpetuate it. The meaning (as I interpret it) was: what happened to Karynthia is serious and the other friends should have taken it seriously as an attack that could have escalated into rape, rather than minimizing it via victim blaming.
That behavior is so far over the line that it can’t really be prevented by normal means.
And this is exactly how we get to victim-blaming and enabling rape culture. Rapists are sociopaths and evil, can’t be stopped, can’t be changed, so let’s not even try. Not only is this nonsense; it carefully avoids considering why rapists and harassers do, in fact, make those choices. In part, it’s because they know they can get away with it. People will tolerate public harassment and misbehavior a lot more than they will tolerate someone fighting back against it; easier to pretend nothing is happening than to acknowledge something is.
But in practical territory, this means being extremely confrontational against the evil ones who are not amenable to be educated.
The guy who would laugh at Schrodinger’s Rapist, not because he thinks it’s misandrist, but because he likes being a rapist, sees nothing wrong with it. He’ll never be shamed or guilted out of it. It’s like anti-gay religious people – they’re unlikely to become pro-gay the next day (or year, or decade) because someone told them bigotry was wrong.
You have to change the whole social climate, and you can’t do that on your own. Whoever that ‘you’ happens to be.
I have to deal with the practicalities of transphobia in this world. I’d love to change minds, and live in a world where trans people and cissexual people are considered equal, legally and otherwise, but I know it’s unlikely to happen in my lifetime, and acting as if it was a done deal is likely to be a professional and social suicide (I’ll probably make radical friends, but very few). As well as a physical and psychological danger to myself.
Some people, trans and not, choose to tackle the issue, sue the governments, the companies, and do the heavy lifting that us non-lawyers non-funded people can only dream of. Still, everyday living needs to have practical considerations at hand. So that we all live to fight another day, so to speak.
It’s a bitter compromise for many, but between taking certain precautions and being reckless because you should be able to in an ideal world…the former makes the most sense.
Note that I don’t encourage compromise on issues of expression through body, clothing etc. Only certain behaviors, precautions, or taking mostly reasonable risks (reasonable person standard).
Seriously?
OK…
I think that when you go too far down the “avoid any type of victim blaming in the slightest!” road, you will, inadvertently, end up actually INCREASING the number of sexual assaults, because you are so damn focused against telling people how they might avoid them.
Now: does that mean I actually think that the “avoid victim blaming” people like you are actually uncaring about whether more people actually get sexually assaulted? No, of course not. Do I think that you are deliberately trying to enabling more sexual assaults by taking your position? Of course not, again. you obviously care immensely, as do I.
After all, it would be ridiculous to imply (or infer) that, because you happen to hold different views from me regarding the best way to analyze an unusually complex topic, you actually aren’t anti-rape. Right?
But still, I’ll ask you this:
In the context of violent stranger rape, how precisely do you suggest that we deter the violent stranger rapists, and how do you suggest that potential victims would deal with it?
What threat other than “years of jail” would work? Is there something you can actually do, and what?
If it’s “nonsense” to take the contrary position, do you have an alternative? That would be great, because society sure as hell hasn’t figured it out yet.
Of course, if you don’t have a decent functional answer to this–and I doubt you do, because nobody else does–then the “don’t victim blame at any costs!” meme is head-in-the-sand , at least from my perspective.
Now, there’s an intelligent argument to be had here, which acknowledges the fact that like most things, this is really about tradeoffs:
For every victim that you help to defend themselves against an unknown threat (good!), you also create an implication that the defense is obligatory, and that an insufficient defense is the victim’s fault (bad!)
And for every victim who you don’t train (not wanting to damage them) (good!) but for whom training might have helped… well, then you create an increased risk of actually BEING a victim. And in the grand statistical battle, you create more victims (bad!)
So you have to balance things. And since efficiency usually decreases near the margins, my guess is that the maximum cost/benefit will come somewhere near the middle. I might be wrong. But it’s a complex question, and it’d be nice to be able to discuss it without each side throwing the “you’re not anti-rape enough!” stuff at each other, ya know?
Call me crazy, but, how about: change the patriarchal rape culture, so that we stop treating rape (not just violent stranger rape) as a freaky thing only done by intractable sociopaths, and stop treating harassment of women as something that’s at worst annoying and in fact complimentary? You know, as the original post says: When do we talk about the culture that not only permits these behaviors, but encourages them & punishes victims for being wary of new people after years of bad experiences? When do we talk about why women are cautioned to be nice, to be patient, to be careful, but never told it is okay to say no & mean it without fear of repercussions?
Is it really so hard to take all the don’t-walk-alone-in-bad-neighborhoods-in-a-miniskirt advice as a goddamn given for a change? I don’t know about you, but I have been hearing the How Not To Get Raped advice since I was old enough to ask my parents what ‘raped’ meant. I get it, thanks. Could we, you know, stop retreading all this because it’s much more comfortable to repeat these things and pretend that we’re just talking about an intractable phenomenon?
When we talk about car thefts we talk about locking your car and not leaving your iPhone on the dashboard. But we don’t tell people that if someone steals their new car, they should have driven a beater instead; we don’t say that car thieves just can’t help themselves; we don’t have a culture where if somebody tries to pull off your hood ornament and you chase them off, you’re treated as overreacting and stuck up and my god, the guy was complimenting your taste in automobiles.
Here’s the thing: I don’t see self-defense training and awareness as part and parcel of niceness, patience, or carefulness. It’s tactical, it’s a way of improving our odds of survival. In a lot of ways, it’s a deliberate attempt to override our conditioning towards niceness. It’s helpful to wargame these strategies. I know damn well that I am entitled to walk down any street, anywhere, any time. I also know that it’s in my best interests to wear shoes that don’t limit my mobility and to refrain from wearing headphones that limit my awareness, even if I know no one has the right to hijack my life and body regardless. (I also know that whatever you are wearing, stilettos or Kevlar, I owe you my best efforts to help and defend you.)
And the right to say no and mean it? It is my right, absolutely, and I will insist on it regardless of repercussions. But since the odds of repercussions are often high, I want to be prepared to counter them, and I can only be ready to do that if I think about it and talk about it, especially since the danger can so often arise from the behavior of people we know. “I just want to come up to use the bathroom.” “No, really, let me give you a ride home.” “Hey, it’s just coffee, you don’t have to be such a scaredy-cat.” It isn’t the same as having someone try to run you down with his car, but it’s a social repercussion that can leave us vulnerable.
We have to do all of this shit at the same time. We have to change the world AND live in it. Strategizing is useful. Victim-blaming is destructive, because it’s mean, unkind, and is useful only to delude ourselves that we are safe because we aren’t like her. That’s primitive warding-off behavior and it’s insane.
Why “other than” years of jail? Actually spending years in jail for raping someone, rather than having a jury take seriously the story that she totally wanted it because she was wearing a miniskirt, would be a fantastic start. Taking rape victims seriously when they go to the police, in the hopes that more than a tiny fraction of rapes would actually be prosecuted, would also be fantastic.
Also, there’s not just “violent stranger rape,” which is a tiny proportion of rapes, to consider. If you prevent one stranger rape in a way that convinces ten rape victims that what happened to them can’t “really” be rape, and twenty rapists that what they did was totally okay–after all, they didn’t hold a gun to her head, and she’s had self-defense training…if she didn’t want it, she would have punched him, right?–that’s a huge failure.