Posts by Emma Hart
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
I'll be happy never to hear that fucking idiotic word again. But hey, it's just me.
It's not just you, you know. And it's not only that it's used to push men out of discussions. It's also that it conceals the fact that women do exactly the same thing. AND, it appears to mean "patronising", and we already have a word for that, it's "patronising".
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to Russell Brown,
I do have serious misgivings about the careless use of the phrase "rape culture"
I have my problems with some of the use of "rape culture", as I do with a bunch of other terms (mansplaining, 'bingo squares') that I feel are sometimes used to dismiss people or shut down discussions. But only sometimes.
There's a link in the original column to an explanation of rape culture, which is long, but well worth reading. In particular, we have a dominant idea of what rape is like, what a rape victim looks like, where she will be and what she will be doing, which is completely wrong. As that Shakesville link points out, a woman is nine times more likely to be raped at home, or in a friend's home, than when she's out on the street. Yet the ways we suggest women restrict their lives in order to keep themselves safe are based on the myth, not the reality.
Also. From a US study of convicted rapists which I can't find again, two things. First, people who commit sexual assaults believe sexual assault is far more common than it is. They normalise their behaviour. They think most men do it, and if they don't it's just because they're too chicken-shit. So every rape joke, every shitty sexist remark, every bit of victim-blaming plays into that delusion. And so does every silence in the face of those remarks.
Secondly, and this was really hard for me, even most acquaintance sexual assaults are carried out by someone who's done it before, and will do it again. So even if I can cope with the situation, even if a friend helps get me out of it, what about the next person?
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to Thomas Johnson,
Sometimes I just want to weep. How do people get paid to write that poorly? What does he mean by "luxurious", because it clearly isn't "luxurious"? I may not have much time for Farrar but at least he can construct a sentence.
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to Megan Wegan,
Yeah, I think it hugely depends on how you go about it. Because I can imagine it being horribly awkward and off-putting.
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I will put my hand up and admit to not ever having verbally obtained verbal consent from anyone ever.
I love the concept of enthusiastic consent. For those of us who haven't grown up with that concept, and who still have shame issues talking openly about our sexual desires, it's still problematic in practise. Because you may very much want something, and be totally incapable of saying so.
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Bart? I heart your comment completely. Because yeah, I would like to see PSAs at least tackling the bystander problem, that being a little easier. Because you don't want to be the one saying to a friend the next day, "Oh, shit, yeah, he does that. Sorry."
Also... shit, see there I was going to make a generalisation, and in order to avoid that, I have to speak from my own experience. Sorry. Drag up a chair. Oh, you're all already sitting down.
The incident I mentioned in the column happened near the end of 7th form, and involved a guy I actually fancied, and people knew I fancied. They'd popped off for a joint, and while they were away they hatched a plan. They ran in and scooped me up off the lawn and carried me inside, and I was laughing. The way you would be, if your friends did that.
When I came back out, I was not laughing. I was very quiet. While I was waiting for the ride home that never turned up (because my girlfriend had co-opted him), one of the guys involved came up and apologised to me. We'd known each other since childhood. We went to Sunday School together.
And the way I got through the rest of the year, and my exams, was by telling myself that it wasn't that bad. It could have been worse. It wasn't rape-rape. Because there were five of them, and all they had to say was "She was totally up for it", and nobody would believe me. And anyway, I shouldn't really have been there.
It's taken me a long time to realise that when I used to mull ideas like "Well, maybe there should be degrees of rape, like the US system for murder", what I'm saying is, "Because that can't have happened to me. That was something else."
So it's not just that we don't want to think about things we have seen or things we have done as being rape or sexual assault. It also happens that people don't want to think about things that happened to them in that way.
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to 3410,
That up there, what Russell just did?
Also, I have emailed you. Obviously there are issues in play here that can't be discussed in public.
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to 3410,
If someone wanted to talk about that happening to them, that warning's not exactly going make them feel terribly comfortable discussing it if they didn't have the "appropriate" reaction, is it?
What Megan said. Adding that I didn't say it HERE, and that I often forget my tweets show up here. I'd gone to my post at The Lady Garden and found the same "you shouldn't be talking about women raping men, that's not important" line. It's in my inbox again this morning.
It's fascinating in a way, because the criticism I'm getting for SlutWalk is completely different from the criticism I got around Boobquake. When to me, they're pretty much functionally identical. So where is my mail telling me what a Bad Feminist and a horrible person I am and how I'm making women feel terrible and making light of sexual violence?
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
God knows I'm sceptical about similar arguments around terms like "queer" & "nigger", which I'd never ever use as self-definition or put up being labelled with by anyone.
I have seen "SlutWalk is problematic, it's not inclusive enough, it's offensive, I won't be going. I'm going to go to Queer The Night, though, because that's inclusive." At which point my brain melted.
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Up Front: Respectably-Dressed Sensible…, in reply to Kracklite,
Somewhere (I've read a lot of stuff in the last couple of weeks, and I can't now remember where I saw it) there was a bunch of data on reported rapes in the US. in 7% of cases, the victim had been drinking and the attacker had not. But in about half, the attacker had been drinking. Which might suggest that the "problematic drinking" is not women's. The biggest problem with being sexually assaulted when you're drunk is that you're less likely to be believed when you report it. Or some nice policemen might make sure you get home safely.
That was the impression I got reading Danyl’s blog, with James the Randroid in particular going on about the reality of it being a hard, dangerous world out there and the only sensible thing to do is not stray too far from the community of decent, clear-sighted, objective people who can be relied upon to advise what’s right…
And while I take Tom's point about everybody being able to take care of themselves, this is how the drinking concern-trolling is always presented. Women shouldn't get drunk, that's just a "reasonable precaution", and if you can't be bothered taking reasonable precautions... then something.
(the last time I was completely wasted in a bar, a guy hit on me, persistently. He put his hand on my breast, I pushed him away and said "No." He stopped, and went away.)