In 2011 Dr Abigail Bray, a researcher and writer now living in the South of France, joined with me in co-editing Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry published in 2011 by Spinifex Press. Spinifex has just released Abigail’s new book Misogyny Reloaded . This is an extract from Chapter 3, published with permission. [*Trigger warning for survivors of sexual assault].
A world without rapists would be a world in which women moved freely without fear of men. That some men rape provides a sufficient threat to keep all women in a constant state of intimidation, forever conscious of the knowledge that the biological tool must be held in awe, for it may turn to weapon with sudden swiftness born of harmful intent … Rather than society’s aberrants or ‘spoilers of purity’, men who commit rape have served in effect as front-line masculine shock troops, terrorist guerrillas in the longest battle the world has ever known.
—Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (1975, p. 15)
Living in a rape culture means adjusting to being hyper-vigilant about male violence to the point where risk management becomes second nature. It means living with the continuum of male sexual violence on a daily basis, from creepy and threatening looks and comments in the street, home and workplace, to online rape threats, attempted assault and actual assault. It means inhabiting a paradoxical space where the rape and murder of women is prohibited but everywhere eroticised and the object of laughter.
To take just one example of rape culture, the globally popular American fantasy series Game of Thrones features a blond child bride being continually raped by her warlord husband. “But it’s all ok because a prostitute slave teaches the thirteen-year-old princess super sexy sex skills, and she proceeds to blow the warlord’s mind so throughly [sic] that they fall in love,” notes feminist Laurie Penny (2012)
Many men, when asked a simple question about why male domination exists, reply that it is because men are stronger than women. This answer seems innocuously simple-minded, but the explanatory statement that ‘men have power over women because they are physically stronger than women’ also means ‘men can rape and kill women if they want to’. There is no point replying that it is illegal to rape and kill women. The law does not come into it at all. It is as though the legal prohibitions against male sexual violence are little more than the sales pitch of a corporation eager to hide its criminal intent behind images of satisfied customers.
The majority of victims do not report, and the majority of rapists walk free (Miller et al., 2011; Fayard and Rocheron, 2011; Belknap, 2010). As the title of a 2013 article by Nigel Morris in The Independent puts it: ‘100,000 assaults. 1,000 rapists sentenced. Shockingly low conviction rates revealed. Latest statistics also show difficulties in persuading victims to report attacks’. Although media attention on particular rapes occasionally stirs up public debate, these rapes are the exception to the norm simply because victims have broken their silence and the criminal justice system has been involved. One cannot but wonder how many people know of, or are friends with, men who have sexually assaulted women and children, and yet do nothing about it.
It has only been since the 1960s and 1970s that most western women have been able to work outside the home without needing permission from their husbands/owners. It is only in the last few decades that marital rape has been recognised in some nations as a human rights violation. In Australia marital rape was outlawed as late as 1991 (Temkin, 2002). As late as 1993 the United Nations published the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. In many countries young girls are still forced to marry their rapists.
Raping women and children continues to be a lethal form of oppression in advanced neo-liberal democracies. Victims of male sexual violence continue to be branded as ‘damaged goods’ and re-abused in the criminal justice system to such an extent that the majority of victims simply give up and opt out of the legal process (Fisher et al., 2000; Fisher et al., 2003). Lawyers are often reluctant to take on rape cases because they know they are difficult to win. Child victims of male sexual violence are subjected to ritualistic humiliation in courts (Taylor, 2004). Child pornography victims are subjected to malicious attacks by bourgeois academics in high-ranking American legal journals (Lollar, 2012).
Young women, who sustain the majority of sexual assaults, not only endure court-licensed abuse, but they are now also bullied online for daring to speak out. Raped girls are urged to kill themselves by pack verbal abuse that is all too often uttered as mocking jokes (Salek, 2013). Victim-blaming has become lethal.
In a novel by feminist academic Yvette Rocheron, Double Crossings (2009), a mother decides to commit suicide after she is brutally raped by a cousin, knowing that, if she lives, the crime will destroy her family and her life. “For her loved ones, a sublime act of love … She would go down knowingly … [T]he vitriolic defacement of women, the misguided abortions, the rapes. She was a thousand years old” (p. 271). There is no humour in this novel as the mother leaps to her death, merely a solemn awareness of the barbarism of a crime against women that leaves the murderous poison of social death in her body.
I have lost count of how many women—friends, students, colleagues, relatives, and acquaintances—have told me they have been raped. All of the rapists have gotten away with it while the women are burdened with years of unspeakable shame and self-hatred, or shunned by their families for daring to speak out about male relatives who raped them. The stories involve horrendous child sexual abuse, rape at knifepoint, abductions in vans, group rapes, women being drugged and raped, rapes by colleagues, partners and ex-partners. A woman who was raped by her grandfather told me recently that it took her 30 years to understand that her body belonged to her. Another woman, a feminist activist and journalist, after going public about being raped at knifepoint, was subjected to online abuse along the lines that she should be ‘raped with a box cutter’. When I read the comment about the box cutter it took a few moments to sink in that the man who had posted the comment was saying that he wanted to butcher her vagina with a knife. Not surprisingly, many women keep quiet about being sexually assaulted. And all of this occurs in a world in which women who speak out about male sexual violence, or any form of male domination, are routinely subjected to online rape threats (Lewis, 2011). Again, the majority of threats never result in prosecution and women are often told to ‘get over it’, ‘toughen up’ or ‘lighten up’ or have sex with a man. ‘She just needs a good fuck’, is how the all too familiar saying goes … Oddly, having sex with men is meant to dispel fear of being raped, as though women who have an accurate assessment of the dangers of rape culture are hysterics who just need sex. The idea that women enjoy being raped still persists (Suarez and Gadalla, 2010); and if women are assumed to enjoy being raped then their protests about being harmed by rape can easily be reduced to a farce.
More about Abigail’s book and how to order can be found here.
15 Responses
Frankly I am staggered and amazed. Notwithstanding this the challenge is out there for all males with and in whatever capacity they have to stop this.
This book is a must read for all women and teen girls because whilst first wave feminists campaigned against pandemic male sexual violence against women and girls, the men in political power swiftly claimed such ‘incidents’ (sic) were rare because women and girls were responsible for ‘seducing’ (sic) innocent males!
Now once again even after the campaigning of Second Wave Feminists we have yet another resurgence of mens’ lies concerning their male pseudo sex right to rape and/or subject women and girls to sexual violence is womens’ and girls’ fault never the men and their male apologists/defendants.
I predict this book will be damned by malestream media as ‘hysterical’ and lacking in real research!! Men will do everything they can to erase the fact male sexual violence against women and girls is still a pandemic and no it is not due to males’ biology but because men have always put in place structures and systems which justify/excuse/minimalise/condone male sexual violence against women and girls.
We women will not be silenced by the male sexual predators and their male collaborators who whilst they themselves do not believe they are ‘male sexual predators’ do enable other men to continue their war on women with impunity.
Given the (now) documented extent of rape, we also need to understand the male silence.
I must know a rapist. I know a lot of men, after all, and some of them must be rapists, but I don’t know of any. This means that I – and a lot of men who aren’t rapists – live in a strange, disconnected world outside the experience of women and the subset of men who rape. It’s time that we got involved and ended the silence. If anyone can begin to understand rape and how to stop it, it’s got to be us. We know the abhorrence of rape (because we don’t do it) and we must know the urge or motive (because we’re men); so the answer to eliminating (is that too optimistic?) this aspect of men’s behaviour has to come from us.
I’d like to suggest that perhaps Dr Bray’s next book should be ‘Why we rape’; a book which confronts men – rapists and non-rapists – with the behaviour and asks them – demands of them – both the explanation (no matter how pissweak that explanation is) and the mechanisms by which we can eliminate it. In the meantime, men like me need to start asking the question of other men, “Why do we rape women and children?”
It makes me so incredibly angry when I read statistics that porn has reduced the incidence of rape. Statistics based purely on REPORTED rapes prove NOTHING!! I for one, was raped at the age of 16 by an older ’23’ year old. I never reported it knowing without doubt, that I would have been interrogated over and over again, forced to go into detail with complete strangers regarding the most traumatic experience of my life, and cross examined in an attempt to make me the idiot who brought it on myself. My rapist could possibly have received a slap on the wrist, but I lived in a small town so his friends and family would have made my life a living hell. I’ve heard of many other women in similar situations. Also with the binge drinking culture now so rife, there are many. many young girls finding themselves in situations they are unable to control. They are raped and then blamed for their own stupidity for getting into a bad situation, no blame is put on the perpetrator, the guilt is put onto the victim. Until statistics include UNREPORTED rapes they will never display the extremely shocking, and ugly truth.
Actual Men: It is your responsibility as a man to act. The battlespace is the workplace and pubs and wherever these puerile idiots spew their misogynistic filth and try to use humour as a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Call them to task by telling them of the women you know and the hurt they’ve suffered. Point them to sites like The Unbreakable Project. Our current culture trumpets that we’re all just biological machines and that our actions have no conequences. Neither are true.
“Men” with that attitude usually are hiding one helluva lot of insecurity. If they snap back at you, that’s where to hit them. Blokes who have to force themselves onto/buy a woman rather than earning their respect? Pathetic.
I read a piece on Feminist Current about how it’s not the responsibility of feminists to spend their time educating men on women’s oppression. Although I do actually seem to spend a lot of time educating men, I get frustrated when I see men claiming to be our allies criticising our language or our strategies, men who think every piece should be prefaced with “SOME men”. These men direct their energies into criticising our efforts and not where it would actually do good- focused on other men and male violence.
Men who want to be allies need to just listen to our experiences and support us. We don’t owe them long conversations explaining why their privilege blinds them to our oppression and abuse. I discussed this with my husband and he said, “Well if I hadn’t married you and you hadn’t educated me then I wouldn’t have known any better today.”
I accepted what he said, but I still believe it’s not our job to teach men basic humanity. And I hate how we have to personalise everything for men and boys- “What if this was your sister, your mother” etc. How about, this is another human being, dig deep and find some empathy without it having to affect you directly.
A lot of men are so used to seeing women as sexy playthings they seem to find it difficult to identify a woman’s humanity unless that woman is somehow connected with them in a personal way. hence the “what if she was your sister, mother” tactic. The hot chick on the front of what is embarrassingly called a “men’s mag” is nothing to the average man. If it were to be his daughter, maybe he would have a problem with other blokes speaking about her that way. I suppose thats the idea.
however, ive met a number of guys who just wouldn’t care even if it was their daughter. Have we bred a nation of sociopathic men? and cowards too gutless to stand up to this?
Right, sure, Jim: if men would see women on the covers of lad mags as THEIR property, they might care that she were being degraded. Because men see women as property; as unpaid slaves, subhuman f***toilets and punching bags. Studies have shown that when men view pornography (WHICH IS HATE SPEECH AGAINST WOMEN) the same part of their brain activates as when they use tools.
Men are a plague; a disease. They DESTROY everything they touch. A bullet for every rapist.
The sooner men are wiped out- or at the least culled down to about 10 percent of the current infestation, the sooner we can begin to heal ourselves and our planet.
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dastardlydads. blogspot. com
Please ladies…. Enough of the hate speech against men. I have men in my life whom I love dearly, and maybe some of you could use the ‘what if it were your son, brother, father’ attitude you expect men use towards women. We are all human, good and bad. Perhaps if we started focusing on our commonalities instead of our differences we could move forward instead of playing the blame game.
This article doesn’t surprise me – having worked in a high school for some years, hearing the stories I do….
I’ve been saying for some time – I wish someone would do a comprehensive survey amongst girls and women (15 – 40?) to gauge a more accurate indication of sexual harrassment/assault/ rape in Western culture – Australia/UK/USA etc. (Also including those who suspect they were, whilst being drugged etc. And figures of reporting/convictions.)
Maybe this would give our society the ‘kick up the backside’ it needs about the extent of the problem – and where this is headed if we don’t sddress it.
Kim,whay are you trying to silence female revolt? that is avery odd replay for someone who claimed to be raped in the 16.
Isn´t men violence horrible enought? i think this “men-hate” thing very curious…they can hate us freely,they don´t think twice before doing the atrocities,but then,we we get revolted,we are the infamous and insane “men-haters”.From who comes the real hate in the first place?? we always have to love men,no matter what they do to us?? nothing more cruel than that.
Maria, if female revolt involves irrational hatred of ALL males then count me out. If an aboriginal assaulted me it wouldn’t mean I’d hate ALL aboriginals. If I did I’d be racist. Same principles for men and sexism. If one Catholic sexual assaults a child should ALL Catholics be HATED. The stupid brainwashed HATRED that seems to exist will get humankind nowhere. You talk about ‘they’ and ‘them’, do you have no male friends or family that you believe are not hideous monsters?? By the way, thanks for your suggestion that my rape is ‘claimed’, and because of my non men hating opinions suggesting my ‘claims’ mustn’t be real. Well it’s been real to me for 26 years, however I’m smart enough to know hating my brother isn’t going to fix anything.
Ah, yes… “NOT ALLLL MEN ARE LIKE THAT”! Enough of them are, and the ones who aren’t stand by silently, benefiting from women’s fear of male violence. As long as males do what they do, I will HATE THEM for it.
And, no, I have never known a man–NOT A ONE–who wasn’t a lying, abusive monster.
The lengths that women go to deny the TRUTH right in front of them and defend the males who terrorize them every day of their lives is bizarre and utterly tragic.
I know the truth: men are a plague. That truth can NEVER be taken away from me. I will share the truth far and wide as long as I live.
If only I loved, coddled, and submitted to men ENOUGH, then they would see me as a human being and deserving of respect! /s
This has NEVER worked… not in thousands of years. It won’t start working any time soon.
Yisheng, Keep it up, I’m sure you’ll keep turning all young girls off feminism and ever being remotely interested in learning about it when the loudest voices are the extremist radicals who somehow seem to think the answer is drowning all baby boys and starting a war against men. If you think the only way you get love from a man is to act like a doormat I’m not surprised you only attract bastard losers.