For Feisty Feminists

The Gift of Fear (and other survival signals that protect us from violence) is a book that is well worth a read for the information presented, even if it is not particularly well-written. The book focuses on situations where we fear violence, and tells us how to analyze the possibility that someone will actually commit violence. De Becker is a renowned expert on violence in many forms - domestic violence, sexual violence, workplace violence, assassins, celebrity stalkers, even teenage suicide/homicide violence. The title comes from de Becker’s focus on intuition; the gift of fear, he tells us, is that it alerts us to danger that our mind has noticed without necessarily going through the rational part of our brains. True fear (i.e. not constant, crippling anxiety every time you walk to your car after work, but sudden, unexplainable fear that you are in danger) comes from small changes in the sound around us, a sudden flash of an image that we can’t process consciously, or the strange behavior of someone around us. These things, according to de Becker, tell us to fear attack.

De Becker is well-informed, and has a wealth of stories from clients to demonstrate his points. The book is most entertaining when he gets into his own viewpoints related to the topics - particularly his views on the media’s glorification of assassins, or his condemnation of the way our society treats children & teenagers. It is also interesting in the mis-steps he sometimes takes in making a point - in one chapter, he tells us about pre-incident indicators of violence in situations where one would not necessarily worry for safety. As an example, he tells us about three signs that a kangaroo is going to attack, which he says is a rare occurrence. After listing the indicators, he informs the reader that he actually just made it all up to point out that people sometimes spread false information. Wait, what?

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The sweet, sweet sound of people saying things that are actually true in a class about sexual violence. Here’s how to make me think, “Damn! That’s true! I have nothing to critique about that statement - you want to smash the patriarchy too!”

• DO acknowledge that there are no situations where past consensual sexual behavior has anything to do with a current accusation of rape.
• DO acknowledge that the law is not handed down from on high, perfect and just - but that it is a product of the culture we live in, and reflects the biases of that culture.
• DO recognize that even laws that are helpful in combatting a rape culture are used by judges and lawyers who have been indoctrinated into said rape culture.
• DO recognize that helping victims of sexual assault obtain justice requires that we, as a culture, thoughtfully examine the way that we think and talk about sex. For example, if we think the idea of getting consent at every level of sexual activity, as well as each time we engage in said activity, is ludicrous and unsexy, what does that say about us - and about our views on the ‘right’ to sexual access versus the right to sexual autonomy?

I’m a little sad that the mere recognition of the fucking truth makes me want to do cartwheels. If we didn’t live in a supremely sexist society, these types of statements wouldn’t make me elated - they would be akin to telling me that sky is above us and the ground below.

Inspired by the conversation that ensued after the class that inspired this post.

• Do NOT take up class time in a class about sexual violence by requiring everyone in the class to explain to your addled, privileged brain exactly why mistreatment of sexual assault victims is a gendered problem.
• Do NOT think that pointing out that male sexual assault victims get treated poorly by law enforcement negates the fact that it is still a gendered problem, or think you are SOOO clever for thinking of that. The overwhelming amount of sexual assaults are perpetrated by men against women. Saying that a male victim, treated badly by the system, disproves gender bias and sexism would be like saying that white victims of police brutality disprove racial profiling and police brutality against non-whites. It is still, overwhelmingly, a problem faced by one group of people.
• Do NOT compare a law that would redefine rape as ’sexual contact without explicit consent’ to sodomy laws. The former attempts to give agency to a group of people (women) that have long been denied such agency, in an area where they have long been mistreated, mistrusted, and blamed as victims. The latter is blatant homophobia, and an attempt to police people’s consensual sexual decisions under the guise of ‘the greater good.’
• Do NOT say that criminalizing rape where there was no consent expressed ‘trivializes’ rape, thereby doing a disservice to women who are victims of sexual violence. The underlying subtext of this argument is that violent stranger rape is ‘real’ rape, and the people who are victims of violent assault are the only ‘real’ victims. It also presupposes that women are lying whores who will cry rape to get back at someone, rather than seeing that the proposed standard seeks to give a remedy to people who feel violated.
• Do NOT waste my time by talking about all the what-if’s - ‘What if you’re not sure if the person really wants to have sex?’ or ‘What if the consent is not enthusiastic?’ The answer to these questions is DON’T HAVE SEX. I am also unconcerned with the fact that, if rape is defined as sex that lacks active consent, it means that some people won’t have sex when they could have. So what? It’s sex. It’s not oxygen - and this is coming from someone with a high sex drive. You can live without it. You have no right to sex - especially compared with other’s right to bodily integrity.

Stay tuned for the ‘DO’ installment of ‘How to not be an Asshole’.

For your reading pleasure, I present my reaction paper (slightly edited) to a law review article that proposes that the legal standard of rape should not be ’sexual penetration where there was a lack of consent, and the lack of consent was clearly expressed.’ The proposed standard is that rape, or at least the legal definition of rape, should include those cases where there was not clearly expressed consent. This standard would put the burden on the pursuer to obtain enthusiastic, willingly given ‘consent’ (I have issues with the word consent, you can read about that below).

Apologies to Twisty for the fact that this kind of rips off this post.

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While I was waiting for an appointment at the courthouse today, I scanned over the pamphlets sitting nearby. There is one on protection orders, which is the legal mechanism that is meant to protect those who are abused, harassed, and stalked. It contains a chart detailing what protection orders can and cannot do. The first thing in the column ‘What Protection Orders Cannot Do’ is ‘Ensure Safety,’ bolded and starred.

In other words, protection orders are worth about as much as the paper they are written on. Just another example of how the legal system fails to actually do anything to help women who are subjected to violence, all the while maintaining the appearance of the benevolent patriarch that ’saves’ women from violent sociopathic men.

The reason it’s so ineffective is because violence is the currency of the patriarchy, so the legal system has to maintain a strict balance between looking like it is doing something to eliminate violence, when actually it depends on violence.