Browsing Tag

rape culture

safe spaces or echo chambers?

[content note for discussions of violent racism]

I’ve been paying close attention to the conversation my country is having about the realities of racism in police action for four months, ever since Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown. Thankfully, the discussion has expanded beyond just Ferguson and I am hopeful that this could be a lasting, substantial movement. I’m going to attend the Justice for All March, and if any of you are within the Washington D.C. area and can make it Saturday morning, I urge you to come and be a part of this. I believe it will be a significant moment.

However, since August, I’ve had to avoid conversations about Ferguson, police action, and racism in my private life. I’ve hidden and unfriended so many people on Facebook over the last few months and I still can’t get away from it. Last week a friend of mine commented on an article a friend of hers had posted about Ferguson, and curious, I went to see what she’d said.

Right above her comment was a picture of a semi-truck that was covered in what was obviously supposed to be blood; the caption was “I drove through Ferguson. Didn’t notice any problems.”

I thought I was going to throw up.

And now, scrolling through my Facebook feed makes me nervous. If something even hints at being about rape or racism or sexism I steer far, far away from it; and I also know that I’m not the only person doing this. I’m not the only person who has to mentally steel herself before checking social media, who spends half of the day flinching.

I’ve talked about my desire to create safe spaces for myself in my personal and online spaces and have been accused, more than once, of trying to build myself an echo chamber, and since I talked about one of the dangers of echo chambers last week, I thought it might be a good idea to talk about the difference between safe spaces and echo chambers.

One of the things I want all of you to know is that you do not have to tolerate the presence of assholes in your life just for the sake of “trying to keep an open mind” or avoiding the idea of an echo chamber. If you are in a Facebook discussion with a friend, peer, colleague, or relative, you are not obligated to continue a “discussion” you find unpleasant, and you don’t have to have anything specific to point to in order to have a valid reason for abandoning it. “This is making me upset” is the only reason you need, and you do not owe it to anyone to explain that.

Another thing that’s important to understand is that you don’t have to constantly be engaging with people who viciously disagree with you in order to avoid being in an echo chamber. When I feel mentally prepared, I go and look for articles written from a perspective I disagree with. I read things from Breitbart, and Fox News, and The Blaze, and Christianity Today, because I think it is valuable to at least be aware of what those sorts of people are saying—but I only do that when I am in the mood.

You don’t have to douse your life in perspectives you find distasteful or disagreeable. Being conscientiously aware is possible without having to face it every single time you log in to Facebook.

I am also selective about the sorts of conservative friends that I have a dialog with. I am still friends with many conservatives—online and off—and I enjoy talking to them about things because we are capable of having an actual conversation that doesn’t devolve into Bible references and invectives. There’s a difference between talking with my staunchly pro-life college professor and the man who posted that picture of the blood-spattered semi. One conversation could be productive, even insightful: the other is guaranteed to be a trainwreck-level nightmare.

And lastly, from my personal experience of running a blog, I think it’s pretty much impossible to build an echo chamber unless you intentionally and systematically go about cutting yourself off from every single source of information and every single person who doesn’t totally agree with you. I have a lot of very progressive, very liberal, very feminist, very queer friends, and a few months ago I got into a discussion with one about whether or not Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” contributed to rape culture. She said it didn’t, I said it did.

That sort of thing happens a lot. From the interactions I’ve had with many of you, most of you are here because you enjoy the sorts of things I say or the way I say them or something—but that doesn’t mean you agree with me about every single thing I write always. I love that. I go out on a limb with some of the things that I write—writing them in such a way as to inspire discussion. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it when it happens.

Just the other day, a commenter pointed out something that she thought I’ve been doing wrong in the way I’ve handled Grace’s participation in Real Marriage, and after reading her comment, I agreed with her and committed to not doing that thing anymore.

So, even if all of the people you talk to in your real life and online agree with you on several basic principles, you’re still probably not in an echo chamber.

Which begs the question: when are we in echo chambers?

Personally, I feel that I’m shutting myself up in an echo chamber when I start seeing the people I disagree with as inhuman—and that is a struggle some days. Yesterday Matt Walsh posted a … I don’t even know how to describe that thing he put out on the internet. It was the post of refuse, the post of filth, the post of putrescence. Rubbish, Filth. Slime. Muck.

Anyway, when a man writes something like that and flings it out into the void, it does make me wonder if he is an actual human being with a heart—and that’s wrong. I think what Walsh does is monstrous, but he is still a human being created with the image dei and beloved by God.

As hard as that is for me to imagine.

Walsh is an extreme example, but when we reduce those who disagree with us to “opponents” or “conservatives” or “liberals”—when we take the position that this one thing that I disagree with you about right now is all you are, we are doing something wrong.

Photo by Brian Smithson

December 10, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

"Real Marriage" review: 123-138, "Disgrace and Grace"

[content note: sexual violence and victim blaming]

This chapter was a … struggle. I’ve known it was coming for a while, but I wasn’t certain how bad it would be. It deeply concerns me because if this is how Mark and Grace Driscoll and the pastoral staff of Mars Hill has been counseling sexual abuse survivors I’m horrified, and I’m grieving for all the men and women who have been harmed by their teachings.

There was one section that I didn’t have a problem with, and was encouraged to see– the one headed “Serving and Protecting your Children” on 136-37. She recommends giving children the words they need to describe their abuse, about the difference between good and bad secrets (surprise parties vs. “this will be our little secret”), and assuring them they won’t get in trouble if they relate something that happened to them. She also makes it clear how important it is to believe your children, no matter who they tell you harmed them, and I was grateful for that.

The rest of the chapter, though, was a nightmarish trainwreck and in my opinion is totally irredeemable. Everything she says is not just wrong but actively harmful.

I also think it will be helpful for me to simply allow what she says to speak for itself. Often I get asked why I’m reviewing this book, and this chapter is a perfect example. Grace says some horrific things, but Grace is not alone. She is one evangelical Christian woman among thousands of others and “biblical” counselors who will all tell sexual abuse survivors the exact same thing, and they’ll probably say it in similar ways.

Before we get to that, though, I want to highlight something that I think is revealing:

Was Mark really safe to talk to about it, or would his response cause more pain (123)?

What will happen to our church and our life if they know about my abuse (128)?

The first time I told Handsome about my rape and abuse, it never once occurred to me to wonder if he was a “safe” person. There was not a single second that I was worried if his reaction would hurt me. I was nervous about telling him, but not because I thought he would possibly think of me differently. And this breaks my heart for Grace because her gut knew that Mark’s reaction wasn’t going to be the right one (“Sometimes his responses caused fear all over again” 132); she makes casual references all through this chapter about how Mark had to learn and adapt in order to respond “appropriately,” and she talks about that as if it’s normal.

That is not normal. That is disturbing.

Also, the fact that she was worried about what the congregation at Mars Hill might think tells me that they had not been building a church that was safe for survivors. If a church hears “your pastor’s wife was in an abusive relationship” and reacts with judgment and condemnation, you have not been responsible leaders. Unfortunately, this is a failing endemic to evangelical churches everywhere.

Anyway, I want to spend the rest of the post showing how evangelicals use Christian-ese in order to victim blame survivors.

We wondered if it was really possible to trust each other again … (126) [implying that she had done something by being abused/telling him she’d been abused to be untrustworthy]

I had lived a double life, a pastor’s daughter and wife filled with deception and fear. (127)

That meant asking the Holy Spirit to restore any memories that needed to be brought into the light so I could be cleansed … and it meant Jesus’ righteousness alone had to replace all my old identity of abused, neglected, dirty, and worthless [sic]. (127)

We quickly realized there were large numbers of abuse victims attending our church … Mutual, honest accountability had always felt too vulnerable but it was part of the process I needed to prayerfully participate in. (128) [“accountability” is a term used among Christians that is intrinsically linked to sinfulness; men who struggle with porn have “accountability partners,” many small groups have “accountability times” where they confess sin to each other.]

I finally wanted to put my own sin and shame to death, through Jesus’ death on the cross. (128)

God gave me a few trustworthy women to encourage and exhort me and love me, despite knowing the truth about me. (129)

I never thought [healing] was possible, but that is what repentance and redemption feel like. (129)

To cope with the pain, I initially pretended to be a “good girl,” … without true repentance. (130)

It was an identity crisis [referring to different common coping mechanisms experienced by many survivors] because I wasn’t rooted in Christ. (131)

But we each need a new identity so that we don’t feel condemned by our sin. (132)

I sobbed off and on for hours over the pain of abuse and the conviction of my own sin. (133)

I could give many other examples, but the others need more surrounding context and I’m trying to keep the length of this manageable.

Survivors of abuse– any form of abuse– have not sinned. I don’t know how to stress that any more emphatically. The only person responsible for sin is the one doing the abusing, not the victim. Trusting someone not to hurt you? Not a sin. Expecting someone to be a decent human being? Not a sin. Hoping that your abuser is capable of change and growth? Not a sin.

There is a common argument among evangelicals, especially “biblical counselors,” that it is important to claim “responsibility for your choices”; very often they frame this in terms of “autonomy,” appropriating feminist vocabulary in order to cloak what they actually mean. In reality, what they’re doing is a logical fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc, more commonly known as “false cause.” Grace argues that because she chose to date her abuser and chose to have sex with him willingly, she is partly at fault for what happened. If she had not chosen to date him, or chosen to have sex with him, the abuse would not have happened.

And, in a ridiculously literal way, that’s true. However, just because the abuse happened after she started dating him does not mean that she was abused because she dated him. It happened because he was an abuser.

In my opinion, there are few “counseling” ideas more poisonous. I spent so many years trying to do this, trying to be “responsible by recognizing what I had done wrong,” not allowing myself to have a “victim mentality,” and all it did was cause agony.

There’s a secondary problem going on in this chapter, most clearly seen in this:

My judgment was clouded once I had sex with someone outside a marriage relationship. The abuse made me feel dirty and defiled, and the lie that I had no value became even more believable. (136)

This is what purity culture does to sexual abuse survivors. I don’t want to say that without purity culture no victim would ever feel “dirty” or “defiled” after being abused. Abuse is intrinsically a deep spiritual, emotional and physical violation and it will cause pain and suffering, regardless of whether or not purity culture exists. However, Grace feels that because she’d consented to sex that her abuse was inescapable (“I was filled with my own guilt from fornicating and told myself if I married him it would cover my sin somehow” 124), and she felt that way because purity culture teaches women that sex– even rape– makes women dirty and defiled.

And she’s clueless that the “lie that I had no value” comes from purity culture, the exact same lie she’s promoting all the way through this chapter.

November 10, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

ordinary monsters

[content note for child sexual abuse and rape]

If you are anything like me, you were probably sick of hearing about John Grisham’s comments the first second you heard about them. Another celebrity said something beyond uninformed and ridiculous about abuse and rape? I’m shocked.

If you haven’t heard what he said about child pornography (a crime that I believe should be referred to as “paying to watch other people sexually abuse and rape children”), here’s the salient bit:

“We have prisons now filled with guys my age. Sixty-year-old white men in prison who’ve never harmed anybody, would never touch a child, but they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn …

I have no sympathy for real paedophiles. God, please lock those people up. But so many of these guys do not deserve harsh prison sentences, and that’s what they’re getting.”

Turns out he was talking about a friend, Michael Holleman, who served 18 months in prison, and who also disagrees with John and says that “‘I did something wrong and I don’t have a bit of resentment about the way I was treated.” John has since apologized for his comments:

Anyone who harms a child for profit or pleasure, or who in any way participates in child pornography—online or otherwise—should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

My comments made two days ago during an interview with the British newspaper The Telegraph were in no way intended to show sympathy for those convicted of sex crimes, especially the sexual molestation of children. I can think of nothing more despicable.

I regret having made these comments, and apologize to all.

Ok, now that we’ve gotten all the background stuff out of the way, I want to talk about this. When I saw this start popping up in my news feeds, some of the comments accompanying these articles were things like “someone should get a warrant and search his computer,” implying that John must have also watched recorded-for-profit child rape– but I disagree with that, and to a certain extent I get this.

What he said was inexcusable and completely unjustifiable, but he said nothing more than what a huge section of our culture actually thinks about abusers and rapists, and that’s what I’d like to focus on.

John Grisham had a friend who– drunk or not, accidentally or not– spent at the very least five minutes (according to Michael’s own words) watching someone else sexually abuse and rape a child. I don’t think John really wants to admit that his friend was capable of doing something truly heinous and something worthy of going to prison for, so, like many of us, he took advantage of the lie we all tend to believe: his friend is not a real pedophile. He’d never really hurt someone. Therefore, the fact that his friend started watching the rape of a child and didn’t immediately click away in horror isn’t a real problem. Plus, he was watching someone rape 16-year-old girls who “appeared older than their chronological age,” so it’s not really a terrible thing.

That falls right into place with the common understanding of rape. My friend isn’t a horrible, terrible, gross, disgusting monster. My friend is a decent fellow. I like him. He couldn’t possibly rape someone, so if someone says he did, she must be a lying bitch. Because, after all, rape is horrible, so only truly repulsive people are capable of doing it, and I would never be friends with them because I’m a good person.

And, to a certain extent, they’re not totally wrong. The vast majority of the population– male, female, and otherwise– are not rapists and will never rape someone. Most of us recoil in horror at the very thought. But that doesn’t mean that the people who are capable of sexual assault and rape aren’t our friends, the people around us that we like. These people seem normal, ordinary, likable. In fact, for most of their lives, they could be fairly decent people who seem to have a pretty reliable moral compass. These people do not spend all of their time hiding in alleys. In fact, 70% of the time, women are raped by people they know, not strangers. The person that they trust to walk them home from the bar when they know they’ve had too much to drink. Their boyfriend. Their husband.

Ordinary monsters.

In fact, this came up in a recent episode of The Mindy Project. I only have a passing familiarity with the show, but they recently tried to cover “consent” as an episode topic … except it went off the rails and featured Mindy’s boyfriend anally raping her. And Mindy spent the rest of the episode wondering if she was good enough for her boyfriend, instead of calling him out on the fact that he’d put his penis inside of her anus without her consent.

As the viewer, we’re supposed to like Danny. In fact, the few times I’ve caught the show, it seems like Danny is supposed to be a sort of grounding character for Mindy, and also perhaps more moral? That’s speculation, I’m not familiar enough with the show to say, but that was the impression I got.

Except Danny raped his girlfriend.

My own rapist? For the longest time one of the things that held me back from understanding that he’d raped me was the same lie that John Grisham believe(s/d). My rapist wasn’t a monster. I was in love with him. He did all of these wonderfully sweet, romantic things. He surprised me. He loved his parents. He wanted to serve God as a missionary. Everyone on campus adored him. He couldn’t possibly have done that. Except he did. I told him no, and he did it anyway.

This is one of the biggest lies our culture needs to stop believing, because as long as we believe that only hideous monsters who are clearly visible to everyone can do these horrible things, rapists and abusers will continue getting away with it.

Photo by Ville Koivisto

October 17, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

"Captivating" Review: 61-76, "Wounded"

[content note for victim blaming]

This chapter is a precursor to the argument Stasi is about to make in chapter five, so thankfully we won’t have to spend a lot of time on it. She’s laying groundwork, and the approach of this chapter is very different from what we’ve seen so far because it’s story-based.

The stories she includes are not happy, and focus on many ways that girls and women have been wounded by their parents. On that, she gets no argument from me. Children are frequently terrorized by abusive parents, and one in four girls are sexually abused, most often by their fathers.

Where I do disagree with Stasi is her conclusion: she argues that the damage many women suffered as children affected their femininity primarily—since Stasi and John have spent the last seventy pages arguing that femininity (represented by beauty) is the “essential” part of what it means to be a woman, this conclusion is unsurprising.

The wounds we received and the messages they brought formed a sort of unholy alliance with our fallen nature as women.

The effects of being abused, she says, results in us either becoming “dominating” or “desolate” women. We either become “strong” in order to overcome our supposedly God-given tenderness and vulnerability, or we hide our vulnerability behind something—which can include “hiding behind depression” (46). Because depression is obviously something women choose and not a form of illness.

To her, there are a range of character types and personality traits that are unnatural; in fact, she’s going to argue later on that we get these from Satan himself. However, the troubling thing is that these traits include anything that is gendered “masculine” in American culture—such as being an effective leader, or not being overly emotional. Because John and Stasi both believe in gender essentialism, however, they believe that “masculine” and “feminine” qualities are universal and timeless, even though simply reading a few books or leaving the country for a few weeks would dispatch that belief posthaste.

What angered me about this chapter, however, is this:

My friend Sandy was raised in a home with an abusive father and a weak mother. If her dad hit her mother, her mom felt she must have done something to deserve it (64).

Abusive fathers are a too common horror. Accomplices, broken mothers, are a painful reality (65).

…

Excuse me for a moment while I grab a whip and start flipping tables over.

This, on top of demonizing resources available to women in abusive relationships (55), makes me furious with Stasi Eldredge for writing it, Brian what’s-his-name for editing it (237), and Thomas Nelson for publishing it. This is morally and ethically wrong. This is abusive.

Women in abusive relationships are not weak, and they are not accomplices. Dear God, I’m struggling to believe I even have to say that. What Stasi has written here is dangerous and harmful, and I am left grieving because I know abused mothers have read this book. They’ve heard Stasi call them an accomplice—complicit in their own abuse, and responsible for their children’s.

The only person responsible for the abuse of a human being is the abuser.

There are many lies in our culture—lies that turn victims into participants. Lies that lead us to believe that it is our fault, our problem, and only if we were stronger, only if we weren’t so weak, we could do something. We could end it.

Stasi spends a lot of time in this chapter assuring women that they do not have to be “good enough,” that they don’t have to obsess with improving themselves, with being better, that they are valuable just the way they are. Abuse victims commonly believe that if only they could have just done what my husband/father/wife/mother wanted they wouldn’t have been hurt.

However, even though Stasi makes an attempt to comfort victims, she utterly fails, because she has swallowed wholesale the exact same belief. She believes that at least some abuse victims are responsible, that at least some abuse victims are not strong enough, not loving enough, not dedicated enough. They’re not even victims. They’re accomplices.

June 23, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

Leadership Journal, Christianity Today, and #TakeDownThatPost

Have I ever mentioned that my rapist is a youth pastor now? I probably have, but only off-hand. I cannot even begin to express the amount of grief I have suffered since I discovered that. I reported him to the police, but there’s no other action I can take. The only thing my report can really do is help a future victim. When—possibly if, but most likely when—he rapes someone else, if she has the ability to report it there will be a history there. It will help any future investigation be successful.

It breaks my heart every single day that there’s a rapist walking around a church, and he’s a pastor of children. He is in a position to do to another girl exactly what he did to me, and I have I wept so bitterly for those children. I still do, every time I think about the power he wields and the trust those parents place in him. It infuriates me like nothing else does that he is beyond the reach of justice.

Which is why I haven’t been able to read the piece that the Leadership Journal published this week. I have tried, many times, over the past few days to make my way all the way through it, but I can’t. It … it sounds like him. My rapist. It is exactly what my rapist will say when he rapes one of the girls in his care, if he is successfully convicted as so very few rapists are.

He’s a youth pastor. His church probably subscribes to the Leadership Journal. And . . . I . . . oh, GOD!! I don’t want to picture him reading this because I know what that will do. He will read it, and everything that is inside of him, everything about him that would make the rest of us recoil in horror, will rise up in glee. Because here, here is a man who understands him. And he will feel justified, because he knows that a journal dedicated to Christian leadership wasn’t able to see the atrocities in his heart. And he will tell himself that the girl he is grooming wants it, wants him, and it’s only an affair. It’s not rape. It’s romantic.

My heart is wailing.

If I had sackcloth and ashes, I would be in the streets gnashing my teeth at the horror of this.

But, I can do something. You can do something.

Please e-mail the editors of the Leadership Journal and ask them to remove the post ( LJEditor@christianitytoday.com). Ask them to replace it with an article from the victim of a youth pastor, and then another from someone like Boz Tchividjian that offers church leadership an actual education in child sexual assault, clergy abuse, statutory rape, and how it is impossible for a pastor gain consent from a parishioner because of the power he or she has.

If you use twitter, tweet along with #TakeDownThatPost and at @CTmagazine and @Leadership_Jnl.

If you use facebook or other social media, please share one of the following articles.

“An Open Letter to Christianity Today” by Elizabeth Esther
“Christianity Today Publishes a Rapist’s Story” by Libby Anne
“Because it’s Time to Take Down That Post” by Tamara Rice
“On How the Church Discusses Abuse: Denying the Endorsement” by Dianna Anderson
“Because Purity Culture Harbors Rape and Abuse” by Suzannah Paul
“Why did a Journal for Christian Pastors Give a Platform to a Sexual Predator?” By Hännah Ettinger and Becca Rose

If you subscribe to the Leadership Journal, please cancel your subscription and tell them why.

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer

June 12, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

the lies George Will believes about rape

[content note: descriptions of sexual violence]

I’m not going to rehash what other people have criticized in Will’s ridiculous Washington Post piece about how “Colleges Become the Victims of Progressivism” (here’s a DoNotLink, just in case you haven’t seen it yet). There’s already been quite a bit of ink spilled over his assertion that being a rape survivor is a “coveted status”– Amy Davidson broke it down really well in The New Yorker and Wagatwe Wanjuki started the fantastic #SurvivorPrivilege– so I’m not going to waste your time by going over that again.

Instead, I’m going to talk about the rape myths Will believes, and how believing those lies created something as monstrous as “being a rape survivor is a coveted status.”

Here’s the salient portion:

Consider the supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a. “sexual assault.” Herewith, a Philadelphia magazine report about Swarthmore College, where in 2013 a student “was in her room with a guy with whom she’d been hooking up for three months”:

“They’d now decided — mutually, she thought — just to be friends. When he ended up falling asleep on her bed, she changed into pajamas and climbed in next to him. Soon, he was putting his arm around her and taking off her clothes. ‘I basically said, “No, I don’t want to have sex with you.” And then he said, “OK, that’s fine” and stopped. . . . And then he started again a few minutes later, taking off my panties, taking off his boxers. I just kind of laid there and didn’t do anything — I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let him finish. I pulled my panties back on and went to sleep.’”

Six weeks later, the woman reported that she had been raped. Now the Obama administration is riding to the rescue of “sexual assault” victims.

Will did some manipulative and dishonest things in this article, but the most heinous is that he misleads his readers into thinking that sexual assault and rape are not clearly defined (not original to me, my friend Renee Doiron pointed it out); the entirely made-up nebulousness surrounding these definitions, he argues, is going to give vindictive women the ability to ruin the lives of good men, and these women are being spurred on by the liberals and progressives taking over college campuses everywhere. Because, after all, being a rape victim is a “coveted status.”

It’s pretty clear that he thinks that Lisa Sendrow is a lying whore, considering he puts “sexual assault” inside scare quotes twice. But why does he think she’s lying, that what happened to Sendrow is a good example of a woman claiming to be a victim in order to get “privileges”?

Well, there’s a few possible reasons, and each of these probably contributed to this disaster of an article in messy, complicated ways:

1) He believes that giving prior consent makes you unrapeable.

This is, unfortunately, a pretty common myth, and it’s the main reason why police officers don’t consistently investigate reports when the defendant had previously been consensually intimate with the victim, or when the victim had been in a relationship with his/her rapist. It’s also the reason why people like Phyllis Schlafly say that marital rape is impossible.

Any previous history of consensual sexual activity, whatever it is, from cuddling to kissing to frenching to third-basing to sex, does not matter. Ever. If she or he or ze is not currently saying (or clearly indicating, in a trust-based relationship) “yes, please!” then you are a) a creepy jerk or b) a rapist.

2) He believes that “legitimate rape” looks a certain way; i.e., it is violent, and the victim fights back.

This is why you hear a lot of rage-inducing things about rape from men– they have no idea what it’s like to be a woman and to face the threat of sexual violence. To a dude, violent reactions seem appropriate and normal, and they don’t have to contend with the idea that fighting back almost guarantees escalation and is not a solution for women.

When it comes to rape, fighting back in the way that people like Will conceive of it is rarely ever an option. [TW] First of all, when a cis women is being raped, her vagina is probably being penetrated– this is incredibly painful when you are not aroused or lubricated, and “fighting” by flexing your kegels, closing your legs, or resisting in other ways makes the pain much more intense. As a defense, women frequently do things during rape that help to mitigate or minimize that pain– they tilt their hips, they open their legs. This is not a conscious decision, but our bodies know what’s necessary in order to help protect us from long-term damage like cervical bruising or vaginal tears that could require stitches.

However, a man like Will sees “just laying there” as a form of silent consent. That men tend to be physically much stronger and larger than women doesn’t even enter into their minds.

3) He believes that being raped is so obvious to women that we instantly understand exactly what happened.

Sendrow did not immediately report her rape to anyone. In fact, what Will conveniently does not mention is that when she did tell a dean that she’d been raped, she was dismissed. I also did not report my rape right away– for the simple reason that I did not understand at first that what had happened to me was rape. I’d told him no, I’d tried to persuade him to stop, and eventually I gave up and just laid there because he started cursing at me.

I didn’t know I’d been raped because I believed all the same myths that Will does. I thought rape was violent. I thought you could only be raped by a stranger. Because it was my fiancé, and because he hadn’t drugged me or clubbed me over the head, I didn’t think it could be rape. Sendrow was in a similar position. I get e-mails on a weekly basis that are stories from women who are just now coming to terms that they were raped. Sometimes, we just don’t want to admit that it happened. We don’t want to acknowledge that we were that vulnerable.

4) He believes that “basically saying no” doesn’t count. If you don’t scream “no!”, it’s not rape.

This is why I advocate for enthusiastic consent. The “no means no” standard that’s the popular understanding of consent just doesn’t cut it. A 1999 study by Celia Kitzinger and Hannah Frith shows that it’s actually extraordinarily uncommon for people to say the word “no” when they’re refusing something– we use a lot of other things, like body language and soft-sounding phrases like “I’m not interested.” What their study revealed (their results are broken down here by Thomas Millar) is that everyone understands when someone is refusing, even if they’re not explicitly saying the word “no”; in fact, actually using the word “no” is considered impolite and rude.

Women, especially, have to navigate a world where we could be in danger, but it’s impossible to tell the difference between Elliot Rodger and Mr. Rodgers until one of them pulls out a gun or drugs you. Because of that, we have a lot of things we fall back on– which includes avoiding giving a hard no. Men like Will do not live in that world, so they don’t have to think about what it would be like to face a man who is blatantly refusing to get a hint and what women have to ask themselves: if I get forceful with this person, is he going to hurt me?

There are probably others, but these are the ones that immediately leaped out to me.

June 11, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

patriarchy in homeschool culture

[this is what “The Patriarchy” looks like in my head]

I grew up in a subculture of evangelical Christianity that’s known as “Christian Patriarchy,” which is what the people who preach and teach this “lifestyle” un-ironically call it. I was also peripherally a part of the Quiverful and Stay-at-Home-Daughters movements, which are all separate things. A family can be Quiverful without preaching Christian Patriarchy or requiring daughters to remain at home until marriage, for example.

However, that’s not what I’m going to be talking about today.

One of the ex-fundamentalist Christian feminism blogs that I read is Wine & Marble, by Hännah Ettinger. She wrote one of my favorite posts on sex, and I highly recommend her as a writer. Yesterday, her sister, Clare, wrote the fantastically-titled post “Fuck the Patriarchy,” about how she was kicked out of her “Homeschool Prom.” It went viral today, showing up on Gawker, Fark, Cosmo, Jezebel, American Conservative, NYPost, and it should be up at the Daily mail and HuffPo pretty soon.

I was curious to see how each of these sites would handle a story about a homeschool prom, so I followed her story all over the internet, and, of course, ended up in the comment sections. Most were your standard internet outrage, but there were some people questioning the validity of her story (because of course there were). It was interesting to me that a bunch of different men thought that Clare was lying or exaggerating supposedly because men who were “ogling” her wouldn’t have asked her to leave.

It actually took me a second to figure out the rationale behind that, because it seemed so obvious that of course they would ask her to leave if they were “tempted” by the “strange woman” who was “dressed like a harlot” (not saying that she was, just that they thought she was). To me, asking Clare to leave was the entire reason why they were there. When Clare said these men were “chaperones,” that was instantly what I assumed.

However, to these (male) commenters, it seemed counter-intuitive that any man would ask a woman they thought sexually attractive to vacate the premises. If they found Clare attractive, why admit to enjoying the show– or asking the show to leave?

That’s one form of patriarchy, all on its own; implicit in many of those comments was the belief that women exist for the sexual gratification of men, and that men will compulsively ogle women they find sexually attractive, that “boys will be boys.”

However, what the chaperones did in pointing Clare out to the “Mrs. D” of the original article was another, more archaic form of patriarchy: the form of patriarchy where men are the guardians of honor– both of their own, and of “their” women. I’m not sure what the homeschooling culture is like in Richmond (not much like mine, if they have a prom), but at least some of the people in that community are probably familiar with books like Beautiful Girlhood:

One day a handsome young gentleman alighted from a train … As he paced the platform, he soon attracted the attention of a young girl. She watched him flirtatiously out of the corner of her eye, coughed a little, and laughed merrily and a bit loudly with a group of her acquaintances; but at first he paid no attention …

At last he noticed, turned, and came directly to her, while her foolish little heart was all in a flutter at her success …

“My dear girl, he said, tipping his hat, “have you a mother at home?”

“Why, yes,” the girl stammered.

“Then go to her and tell you to keep you with her until you learn how you ought to behave in a public place,” and saying this he turned and left her in confusion and shame. It was a hard rebuke; but this man had told her only what every pure-minded man and woman was thinking. Girls can hardly afford to call down upon themselves such severe criticism. (130-31)

Things like this are the subtext at events like “Homeschool Proms” that are chaperoned by conservative Christian homeschooling fathers. When those men saw Clare in a theme-appropriate dress, looking like a woman and enjoying the evening with her friends, what they saw was a “foolish girl” who deserved the “harsh rebuke” of being escorted out by security.

In this culture, it is the sacred duty of every man to police the actions of every woman. Women are not to be trusted with decision making, let alone gifted the ability to make up their own mind on what they want to wear to their Senior Prom. If a man in this culture even notices a woman sexually, it’s a problem, and she deserves to be confronted and chastised because of it.

There’s two options available to men in these situations: either the girl is simply “silly” and telling her that her dress could cause “impure thoughts” is information she should be grateful for, and she should humbly leave in shame and humiliation– or, she is dressing provocatively on purpose, which makes her a “strange woman” who is “playing the harlot” and she definitely deserves to be confronted and removed. When Clare stood up for herself, that put her firmly into “strange woman playing the harlot” category.

It’s rape culture on steroids. It’s “she was asking for it” dressed up in Bible verses and cutesy Victorian language about knights and fair maidens.

May 13, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

Cersei Lannister, rape culture, and a lot of me flipping the bird in general

[content note for sexual violence]

I’ve read G. R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire up through Feast of Crows, and I’m currently reading Dance of Dragons, albeit slowly. The books are a struggle for me to read, as an abuse and rape survivor. I do enjoy them, although I caution people to engage with Martin’s world critically. He’s been hailed by a lot of people as a “feminist” writer, but I am extremely hesitant to think of him in those terms (read Sady Doyle’s piece there– it’s both hysterically funny and insightful).

Since the beginning, I have appreciated both Sansa Stark and Cersei Lannister as characters. Cersei, up until Storm of Swords, was a relatable character for me– she was forced into a difficult position by the expectations of her father, of her culture, and of her husband, but she did what she could to find happiness in the midst of an abusive marriage and constant rape. There isn’t a lot about her that I would describe as noble, but she felt realistic to me, and I found myself grudgingly admiring her.

And then Storm of Swords happened, and Martin makes it blatantly obvious that we’re all supposed to hate her now because she’s ridiculously incompetent. She’s completely robbed of all sense because, well, the only explanation he offers for this drastic departure is lady-hormones. I don’t follow Game of Thrones as a show, but I’m a part of online nerd/geek communities, so I have a passing familiarity with what the show is like.

Last year, everything in that part of my internet circles exploded because of the rape scene, which a lot of people insisted diverges from the books. I find that accusation amusing because Robb Stark doesn’t even marry the same woman in the show, but this scene seems to matter to people. I wouldn’t be bothered by the scene diverging from the book, as television it is a completely different medium, and the artists — the writers, the directors, the actors, the editors– are already telling an entirely different story than the one Martin originally penned. In many ways I think the direction they’ve taken is intriguing.

However, in this one scene they stayed true to the book.

Jaime does, in fact, rape Cersei in the sept next to Joffrey’s dead body.

She kissed him. A light kiss, the merest brush of her lips on his, but he could feel her tremble as he slid his arms around her. “I am not whole without you.”

There was no tenderness in the kiss he returned to her, only hunger. Her mouth opened for his tongue.

“No,”

she said weakly when his lips moved down her neck, “not here. The septons…”

“The Others can take the septons.” He kissed her again, kissed her silent, kissed her until she moaned. Then he knocked the candles aside and lifted her up onto the Mother’s altar, pushing up her skirts and the silken shift beneath.

She pounded on his chest with feeble fists, murmuring about the risk, the danger, about their father, about the septons, about the wrath of gods.

He never heard her.

He undid his breeches and climbed up and pushed her bare white legs apart. One hand slid up her thigh and underneath her smallclothes. When he tore them away, he saw that her moon’s blood was on her, but it made no difference.

That is rape. There is no other word for this scene. Jaime raped Cersei, full stop.

And, honestly, by this point in the books a rape scene would cause me to think yawn, well of course a woman got raped it’s Martin writing this for heaven’s sake what did I think would happen? There are various things to be said about how often people are raped in Martin’s fantasy world, but I’m not really here to critique the existence of rape in his books. It’s what he does with it, and this scene in particular, that deeply, deeply troubles me, because of what happens next:

“Hurry,” she was whispering now, “quickly, quickly, now, do it now, do me now. Jaime Jaime Jaime.” Her hands helped guide him. “Yes,” Cersei said as he thrust, “my brother, sweet brother, yes, like that, yes, I have you, you’re home now, you’re home now, you’re home.”

This, I have a problem with– because this is a rape myth. It actually gets a fucking number on the Women Against Violence’s list of “Rape Myths”– it’s #17: “When a woman says no, she really means maybe or yes.” It’s the idea that women secretly all want it, they just have to be persuaded. Horrifically, “with my dick” can finish that sentence without the person immediately retching at the utterly revolting idea just expressed.

In Martin’s world, hysterical shrew-bitch women like Cersei Lannister do not get to have their “no” listened to (and we get to say “no” for whatever the HELL reason we want), and strong, handsome, virile, maiden-of-Tarth-defending men like Jaime get to fuck them anyway because actually, she really does want it and I just know because . . . well, no reason– and look, see, she’s getting off on my awesome manly ravishing of her!

But, horrifyingly, this isn’t a rape scene to a disturbing number of people. Chris Ostendorf described it as “complicated consensual sex.” To a lot of people, that she’s saying no to the circumstances somehow makes it not real rape. She would have had sex with him, if it wasn’t for his hand, or where they were, or the septons, or their father somehow finding out, etc.

I have a gigantic, rage-inducing problem with this for the simple reason that when I told my rapist “no,” this is exactly what I sounded like. I couldn’t physically stop someone almost twice my weight, and so I did everything within my power to persuade him to stop. I told him it hurt– he did not stop. I told him “no,” he did not stop. I told him “please, not now,” he did not stop. I said “what if your parents come home?” but he did not stop. I told him I didn’t think it was right (ie, “wrath of the gods,”) and he did not stop.

Finally, I gave up and tried not to let him see me cry because I knew he would hurt me even more if he did. When he assaulted me again, and again, and again, and again, and Again, and AGAIN, I learned that it would all just be over if he got what he wanted. He would leave me alone and go and play Halo if I just played along, no matter how much he hurt me, no matter how often I vomited after because what he made me do to him disgusted me.

So, for all of you people who are arguing that Jaime didn’t rape Cersei:

FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU TO FUCKING HELL.

To George R. R. Martin, the twisted fuck who wrote this scene and is perpetuating the exact rape myth that has caused me unending agony: fuck you. To Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (who plays Jaime), who thinks because “it wasn’t just [rape]” it’s somehow justifiable: fuck you. To Sonia Saraiya who thinks there’s “wiggle room” in whether or not we think Cersei “enthusiastically consented”: fuck you. To Chris Ostendorf, who given the chance would describe my rape as “complicated consensual sex”– fuck you, too. Fuck you all.

***

My problem with this scene in the book (for this post, at least) isn’t that Martin has written yet another rape scene. It’s that what he’s written is a rape myth— a chauvinistic fantasy about male-centric sex that ignores or denies women the ability to consent. Cersei told Jaime no seven different ways, but then suddenly starts begging for it– literally. This is an extremely dominant myth about the difference between rape and consensual sex. In order for something to be considered “legitimate” rape, the victim has to fight tooth and nail until the bitter end. In order for it to be real rape, the victim could never– not once not ever— have consented to sex. If they consented to sex once, well, they’re only saying now for inconsequential reasons and they should just get over it, it’s not that bad.

Martin believes that this is not rape because of the rape myth he believes in– that our culture believes in. Cersei’s apparent enjoyment of her rape (and remember, this scene is written from the rapist’s point of view, not the victim’s, and most rapists think that their behavior is acceptable and normal) in the real world of modern America could be a survival mechanism for an abuse victim– and usually is. Sometimes victims freeze up. Sometimes they, like me, try to resist but then give up because it’s useless and we just want it to fucking end.

Martin does not think that Jaime raped Cersei here, because he believes that women can be manipulative whores who say no in order to be “hard to get,” but in reality really just need to be sexually assaulted into silence and then fucked into realizing what the rapist knew all along– that she actually wanted it.

This is one of the most grievous lies of rape culture– and the actors, the directors, and the writers all used it.

Keep that in mind as you enjoy the season premier tonight.

April 29, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

Pensacola Christian College & Me

from August 2008, while I was still a student at PCC

If you’ve never meandered around xoJane, well, now is your golden opportunity. I’ve been a loyal reader for almost a year now, and it’s a pretty cool place. So, when an xoJane editor reached out to me and asked if I’d be willing to tell a piece of my story for them, you can imagine that my reaction looked a bit like this:

I’ve never really written out the entirety of what my experience was like after my rapist ended our engagement, although I’ve alluded to it a few times. I try to keep what I write about here focused on bigger-than-just-me things, although my story is a good example of what being at PCC can be like.

You can read the whole thing here.

April 10, 2014 by SamanthaField

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