Rapey lyrics, Thicke and the dangers of oversimplifying

So, I hate pretty much everything about Robin Thicke's song and video, Blurred Lines. What feminist doesn't, right? I don't need to go into everything that's creepy, douchebaggy and borderline rapey about the song and video, because plenty of writers have already helpfully outlined it for me. I don't even need to bother satirising its tired, predictable retro-sexism and insidious endorsement of rape myths, because plenty of humourists have already created their own parody videos, and freakin' hilarious they are too. However, when I read this article, which draws links between the song lyrics and the words of actual rapists, I began to wonder if the Thicke-bashing has gotten a little out of hand.

 

Not that the twatty-sunglassed one doesn't deserve every term of abuse in the book every time he purrs 'I know you want it/But you're a good girl' and endorses the concept of 'blurred lines' that every vile git who claims women all mean 'yes' when they say 'no' uses to justify their misogynistic behaviour. But, I get a little uncomfortable when I read the following - "women, according to Blurred Lines, want to be treated badly.

Nothing like your last guy, he too square for you.
He don’t smack your ass and pull your hair like that.

In this misogynistic fantasy, a woman doesn’t want a “square” who’ll treat her like a human being and with respect. She would rather be degraded and abused for a man’s gratification and amusement."

Yes, I bridle at the notion that it's 'square' not to want to have rough sex - I've written extensively about how being 'vanilla' should not be a source of shame, mockery or used as evidence that you are somehow less sexually 'cool' than people who like it ker-razy in the bedroom. Shaming men who don't want to play rough with their female partners definitely seems to be part of a toxic cult of masculinity that defines manhood only in relation to violence. However, I object to the notion that a guy smacking a woman's backside and pulling her hair equals 'degradation and abuse'. I object to the notion that this could only be done 'for a man's gratification and amusement'. I object to the assumption that this is necessarily non-consensual. I object, overall, to the idea that rough sex is something that is degrading, only ever initiated by men, and only ever forced, non-consensually on female 'victims'. (And yes, I've written about that).

Now, I'd rather spend eternity chewing on broken glass than ever consider sex with a douchebag in Ray-bans who comes on to me by saying 'You're an animal, baby it's in your nature', but that doesn't mean that every single word that said douchebag sings must necessarily be sick, wrong and misogynistic. I also feel that to equate Thicke's lyrics with words that rape victims actually had to hear during their assault (even if some victims were happy to collaborate in this article) is to trivialise their ordeal somewhat. It's also just a bit meaningless. If I say 'I know you want it' next time I temptingly offer a spoonful of ice cream to a friend seated next to me at a restaurant table, am I also guilty of perpetuating rape culture? If one of my roller derby teammates calls me a 'good girl' when I finally get a skating move right after the 74th attempt, is that simply bolstering the 'Madonna/whore' divide? I'm being facetious of course, and I know that what happens in life and what happens in sex can't necessarily be conflated (I know also, of course, that rape is not 'sex'). But Thicke's video isn't sex, either. It's media. Dumbass, lowest-common-denominator media at that. It's three men and three scantily-clad women twatting around in a studio. And whatever terrible things we feel it may reflect or encourage in our society, it's not the worst, or the only perpetrator.

Just off the top of my head, I can straight away think of probably ten different lyrics from popular songs that contain potentially shitty attitudes to women. How's about "Turn around bitch, I got a use for you" from Guns n' Roses It's So Easy? Or the same band's Used to Love Her, subtitled But I Had to Kill Her? We could argue about whether the fact the latter song was apparently written not about a woman, but Axl Rose's pet dog, negates the fact it sounds like an endorsement for murdering your spouse, for as long as we can argue about whether the 'ass-smacking' in Thicke's lyrics is consensual or forced, and I guess we might not get very far. But if, like the author of the Sociological Images article seems to be saying, we're not going to give artists the benefit of the doubt, then I guess I'd better start deleting all my G n' R MP3s. By this logic, I guess we'd better ban Britney Spears' I Was Born To Make You Happy too, not just because it's a godawful song, but because of the female subservience that its title and lyrics are advocating. We should probably also go after Alice Cooper's big-haired, chains n' whips-themed 80s classic, Poison, for the lines "I wanna hurt you just to hear you screaming my name". And maybe we should also take to task Wham's Edge of Heaven for the moment where young George Michael trills, "I would strap you up, but don't worry baby - you know I wouldn't hurt you unless you wanted me to" although at least the violence there is premised on consent and desire.

Which makes me think, where do we draw the lines (and not fuckin' blurred lines, either)? If we're going to cite any song with remotely rapey lyrics as intricately bound up with the traumas of real live women who have been assaulted, it's going to be a very long and sickening journey. Jason DeRulo made the charts in 2010 with a song that contained the lyrics "You'll be screaming 'no'''. Not long after, Dizzee Rascal rapped "I'm not forceful but I'm still hardcore/You're gonna give me everything I ask for". And if we assume that the line "I'm gonna give you something to tear your ass in two" must necessarily refer to 'violent, non-consensual sodomy', then we're gonna have to retrospectively condemn pretty little Pharrell Williams for promising to 'tear your ass up', 10 years ago in his duet with Jay-Z 'Frontin'. Personally, I think this assumption says more about the author's determination to wring every last drop of rapey-ness out of Blurred Lines than it does the actual song. Taken in the context of all the other rapey lyrics, I can see why one would assign this meaning to that particular line, but I don't think the lyric refers to anal rape any more than I think the line 'Burn this woman down' in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest means that McMurphy is actually encouraging Billy Bibbit to set fire to his sexual partner.

 

It sometimes feels like feminists are required to take one of two very simplistic sides when it comes to sexist media - either condemning it utterly, as the SI article does, or jumping to its defence and claming that said media can somehow be twisted to be 'empowering', however much evidence there is to the contrary. I don't want to do either. I want to encourage people to see the utter pile of bollocks that is Robin Thicke, his songs and his videos, in a wider context. I don't think it's helpful or wise to employ the shock tactics of placing rape victims' real-life trauma alongside silly lyrics from a shitty song that is one shitty song amongst millions that will be infecting the airwaves this week. I also don't think it's helpful to anyone, male or female, who enjoys consensual BDSM and is tired of what they enjoy being immediately labelled abuse.

 

Pop culture is powerful, insidious and can influence us all in ways we may never be fully aware of. But like a short skirt or a flirtatious smile, it doesn't cause rape, and neither does a stupid hashtag or a douchebag in sunglasses.

Victim-blaming: It's not just for civilians

So, the latest outcry over the blaming of rape victims for their abuse has, rightly, focused on Judge Nigel Peters' decision to give a man who sexually abused a 13 year-old girl a suspended sentence on the grounds that the victim was 'sexually predatory'.

 

Where to start despairing over this story is anyone's guess, as there are so many aspects of the story that make you want to drop your forehead onto your desk with considerable force. How about the fact that 'The girl was accused in court of "egging her abuser on" and was described as "looking older" than her thirteen years, something the judge said he would consider in Wilson’s favour"?  Or the fact that the abuser's barrister said, in his defence “There was sexual activity but it was not of Mr Wilson's doing. You might say it was forced upon him despite being older and stronger than her”?

 

I mean, just take a minute to read that last quote. The sexual activity was not of the abuser's doing. It was forced upon him. Would we ever read about another crime being defended in such an audacious, logically fallacious, victim-blaming fashion? The little old lady forced her handbag on the mugger. The victim forced his Vauxhall Omega on the car thief. The perpetrator of grievous bodily harm may have shoved a broken bottle in his victim's face, but it was not of his doing. How can we still listen to this shit? And how in God's name can anyone get away with standing up in court and still SAYING THIS SHIT?!

 

Well, maybe they haven't totally gotten away with it. Barrister Robert Colover has been barred from taking on sexual offence cases while the Director of Public Prosecutions conducts an investigation into the case and Colover's conduct. Quite right, but talk about shutting the stable door after the sex offender has walked free. Furthermore, how much can we really lay the blame at the feet of a barrister - whose job it is to defend his client by whatever legal means he can, which sadly still includes completely besmirching the victim's reputation - when he employed tactics that he thought would work in his client's favour, and was proved right by the supposedly neutral paragon of justice, the judge himself?

 

Judge Nigel Peters made the utterly contradictory statement that he would take the victim's allegedly deceptive appearance and the fact she was ''predatory" and "egging you on" into account when sentencing, then said “That is no defence when dealing with children but I am prepared to impose a suspension.”  Uh, sure. So if it's no defence, WHY MENTION IT? And why give a sentence that implies you think it surely IS a defence, a defence strong enough to put a child abuser back on the streets?

 

As a result of the objections to his words and sentencing, Judge Peters increased the suspended sentence from 8 months to 12 months, which seems only to add insult to injury. However, the DPP is conducting a separate review and so the sentence may yet change again - although in terms of exposing our legal system as the kind of misogynistic hellhole that we foolishly thought might have improved since Helena Kennedy wrote about the horrendous victim-blaming she witnessed during her time as a QC in the 80s and 90s, the damage is done.

 

All that said, I'm glad that there at least is an outcry, and that it's not just the public objecting, but key members of the British legal system too. Keir Starmer, who has also been instrumental in exposing the pitifully low rape conviction rate and calling for major improvements in the way rape complaints are handled, has not wasted time in addressing this utterly f-ed up case. Another judge, when sentencing a child abuser a few days later, made a point of saying that the responsibility for abuse always lies with the adult, regardless of the child's behaviour. I'm glad to see this, because cases like these don't always get this degree of attention.

 

I spent a great deal of time and energy during the first months of 2013 trying to get people similarly outraged about Judge Niclas Parry's comments that a rape victim 'let herself down badly' by drinking and taking drugs on the night of her attack. It was a real slog to a) spread word about the petition and get people to sign, and b) get a response from the Judge in the face of the constant obfuscation that the people surrounding him practised.

 

After two utterly unhelpful responses from the listing manager of Mold Crown Court, I lodged a complaint with the Office for Judicial Complaints. I received an equally unhelpful response from the OJC, which said:

"I have considered the issues raised in your complaint and I conclude that they relate to HHJ Parry own views and opinion of the people before him. This does not amount to misconduct. It is for this reason that I cannot take your complaint any further. "

 

In light of the recent focus on Nigel Peters, I do wonder how the OJC can say that judges using the platform of a courtroom to propagate their victim-blaming opinions does not amount to misconduct. While I recognise that the two cases are very different, both in terms of offence and outcome (Judge Parry did rightly impose a 6 year sentence on the rapist in this case), the pitiful sentence given to Neil Wilson doesn't seem to be the main issue here. The objection is, and to my mind rightly so, the victim-blaming words of barrister Robert Colover and the way in which Judge Nigel Peters seemed to agree with, reinforce, and ultimately free the abuser of a 13 year-old girl based on the view that a molested child can in any way be 'asking for it'.

 

So why are Peters and Colover being put under the microscope while Parry got away with it? If we are really going to change anything about the utterly rotten state of British justice when it comes to its treatment of rape victims, why aren't we taking ALL the misogynistic lawyers and judges to task - and making sure they can never insult victims like this again? Words have power. They create culture, they spread lies, they perpetuate myths. So long as people continue to believe raped women 'let themselves down badly' and 13 year-old girls 'force' adult men to fuck them - and the comments page of any news story about the latter will reveal that terrifyingly, too many people DO believe this - we can't deny that we need to start addressing not just what judges do, but what they say too.

 

To all rape-deniers and victim-blamers....

...you're probably thinking 'I need read no further, that title surely doesn't apply to me!'. You're probably thinking 'I know rape is a serious and heinous crime, and the rapist is always the one to blame for it!'. You're probably thinking that I'm only talking to obvious misogynists, ones who walk around with a bell around their necks and a T-shirt saying 'Bitch asked for it' to warn right-thinking men and women away from their vileness. But have a gander at this morning's Independent, and then consider your reactions.

If your only thought is 'This is fucking SHAMEFUL evidence of how our society doesn't take sexual violence seriously, and needs to be rectified', then yep, you can stop reading now.

But if you had any of the following thoughts, then stay with me - I need to talk to you.

1) The conviction rate can't be that low for no reason. Some of those women must be lying.

2) If they didn't report it, then how can we know it really happened?

3) False rape reporting ruins so many men's lives, why aren't we talking about that?

4) Men get raped too, why aren't we talking about that?

5)Rape is awful and all, but the rate would be lower if women stopped dressing provocatively/drinking so much/walking alone late at night.

6) A lot of so-called 'rapes' are just a case of women regretting sex the next day. 

7)I'm not a rapist/most guys aren't rapists/it's unfair to men to focus on an evil minority who rape women.

And I know you folks, who think these things, are out there. Because you tweet at me every time I express despair over another police victim-blaming campaign, protesting that telling women not to drink/walk alone is surely 'just sensible advice'. You post comments on my piece about a judge telling a rape victim she 'let herself down badly', suggesting that it's fair to focus on rape victim's behaviour because we would do the same to someone who had their laptop stolen. You are the people who cannot let any discussion of rape go by without feeling the need to blame victims, shift the blame away from perpetrators, and derail discussions with your determination not to focus on the terrible crime that men commit against women all over the world, every day.

And maybe you do it because you flat-out hate women, in which case there's probably nothing I can do for you. If you believe women are evil, lying bitches who get what they deserve, that feminism and protesting against rape is some massive conspiracy to harm men and tip society in women's favour, then please jog on. Nothing for you here.

But I'm willing to believe that not everyone who parrots rape myths is an out-and-out misogynist. I think some are probably woefully uninformed, which is not a difficult thing to be considering how sexist swathes of our media are. Many people are unaware that only 9% of rapes are committed by strangers, and 54% by boyfriends, partners or husbands. Many people are unaware that it's the rapist who is more likely to have consumed alcohol than the victim. Many people are unaware that rape has no higher 'false reporting' rate than any other crime - or that there have been multiple cases of women jailed for false reports only to be later cleared as it was discovered they were telling the truth. Many people are unaware that the reasons many cases don't get to court are not because they are not strong cases, but rather due to police mishandling evidence, failing to properly investigate, treating victims with hostility/disbelief and pressuring victims to drop cases. I hold on to some hope, however insanely optimistic, that with some education, some confronting of real facts accompanied by a willingness to listen to real women's stories, some of the people who make excuses for rapists might actually start to wake up.

And I can understand why people don't want to confront the reality of rape, because it's bloody upsetting. It's easier to imagine that not walking down a dark alley is all a woman has to do to protect herself from rape, when the truth is that the only way women could truly 'avoid rape' is to sever all relationships with men and move to an uninhabited island. It's easier to blame rape on clothes and alcohol than it is to accept that it's much more commonly committed by husbands, boyfriends, ex-partners, friends and acquaintances than it is by strangers. And I'm by no means suggesting it's only men who persist in dodging the issue - I see women doing it all the time too. And I think I know why - because to acknowledge that simply being female is the only 'contributing factor' to rape would be to acknowledge our huge vulnerability as women. Statistically, the loved men in our lives are the ones most likely to turn on us and rape us. We are far less likely at risk from the stranger in the nightclub or the weird-looking guy we pass on the pavement. And it makes us feel like shit to have to acknowledge that, so instead we blame other women for their actions, imply that 'it wasn't really rape' and in so doing try to fool ourselves that 'It couldn't happen to me, because I would have done X Y and Z'.

But we've all got to acknowledge it - men and women - if we're ever going to change anything. Otherwise the vicious cycle will continue. Society, the judiciary and police will continue to be hostile towards rape victims, they will hide in silence and shame, and our conviction rate will remain shamefully low.

So do me a favour, all those who've ever made an excuse for rapists, who've ever said 'Rape is obviously terrible BUT...', who've ever met statistics about rape with hostility, scepticism or disbelief. Try and educate yourself. Do some reading. Think long and hard. Think about the women in your life you care about. Consider how comfortable they'd feel confessing to you that they'd been raped if they knew your first question was going to be 'Are you sure it was rape?' or 'How much had you been drinking?'. Consider how, if they're already aware of your attitude, there may well be women in your life who've long been hiding the fact they've been raped from you.

And take a long hard look at yourself, then make a change.

Recommended reading

The Stern Review - Baroness Stern
Common Myths About Rape - Rape Crisis
Statistics on Rape Reporting/Conviction Rates and Common Rape Myths - Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit
Shocking Low Conviction Rates Revealed - Independent
40 Years of Rape Crisis - Guardian
Women Are Not Wallets - Sian Norris
'Don't Be That Guy' Campaign Sees Rape Reports Fall by 10% - The Globe and Mail

Latest Posts By Me

A review of Hillary Jordan's excellent When She Woke - a feminist dystopian novel envisioning the US if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned - for Bitch.

A piece for Women's Views on News about North Wales judge Niclas Parry, who told a rape victim she 'let herself down badly' - even as he was sentencing her GUILTY attacker.

Latest Posts By Me

One for the Ms Magazine Blog, on why the UK cabinet reshuffle is bad news for abortion rights.

And one for Women's Views On News, on the landmark conviction of a Colombian army officer found guilty of rape and murder.

What I'm Reading

Apologies for lack of recent posts - I've been having a lovely time working for BBC College of Production whose podcast on Women In Comedy, recorded live at the Edinburgh Fringe, is well worth a listen. While I was there I did this guest blog post for BBC Comedy.

Here's some writing by other people I've enjoyed:

Excellent post on the Pervocracy about how ridiculous and insulting it is to both men and women to perpetuate the myth of uncontrollable male sexuality.

A different take on hook-up culture at over at Ms. magazine, which manages to move beyond simplistic 'it's great'/'you're going to hell' arguments.

Fantastically true and honest piece [TRIGGER WARNING] by Laurie Penny on why we need to abandon the idea that rapists are monsters lurking in alleys and can't possibly be the 'nice guys' who we interact with every day.

50 Shades of Kink-Shaming

In a blog post where she sets out why she feels the Canadian police force were right to investigate Cpl Jim Brown, an officer 'outed' as participating in BDSM, Meghan Murphy starts by saying "I really don’t care about ‘kink’ or about ‘kinky people’. It just doesn’t interest me. I don’t give a shit about your leather fetish." Kinksters might feel those words provide them with carte blanche to then say, "Well, I guess I don't give a shit about what Meghan Murphy thinks of my lifestyle then", but as both a feminist and a kinkster, I'm not prepared to walk away quite so easily.

Murphy does make some points in her article that I agree with, such as:

- "Just because you really, really like something doesn’t mean that it is or should be free from deconstruction or critique."

- "Just because you are a feminist or because you consider yourself to be a progressive guy, doesn’t make everything you do a feminist or progressive practice."

 I am definitely sick and tired of the rhetoric of 'choice' being invoked to justify all behaviour, no matter how retrogressive. I will definitely slap the next person who tells me that there's nothing anti-feminist about a woman getting breast implants 'because it's her choice'. That said, I think the depiction of all women as victims and all men as abusers (real or by proxy) is equally unhelpful to any feminist conversation. Unfortunately, when we think about kink, those seem to be the only two sides of the argument that get presented.

"So Brown was looking into the disappearance and sadistic murder of dozens of women. He also happens to be turned on by dominating women and playing out sadistic fantasies in his private life. Does that necessarily make him a murderer? No." OK, I'm with Murphy so far on this point. However, she pretty much loses my support with her next point

"Is it worth exploring the fact that a man in a position of power who was a part of a force that made it pretty clear that they didn’t give two shits about the women who were going missing from the DTES until they were forced to pay attention AND that he liked to play out misogynist, violent fantasies in his private time? Yes."

It's the 'AND' that does it. The conflating of Cpl Jim Brown's taste for BDSM (evidenced by a few photos which sound to me pretty mild considering the stuff you can see on Fetlife) with police failure to take women's disappearances seriously is an unjustified leap to make. To make the link between to the two is a deliberately emotive tactic to imply that men liking sadomasochistic erotica is basically responsible for institutional failures in taking violence against women seriously. Sorry, but I'm going to need to see a little more evidence for that. One man's private sexual preferences do not result in an entire police force of women-hating sadists.

This brings me on to two further points that Murphy seems unwilling to countenance:

- that it is possible to separate the personal from the professional

- and that kink is not violence. I know she spends a great deal of the piece saying she's 'not interested' in hearing about BDSM, and even admits she is not particularly well-educated on the matter. But let's face it, her whole piece IS about kink, albeit in a roundabout way, even if she doesn't want to admit it. We wouldn't even be talking about the Jim Brown case if kink didn't make so many people uneasy and apt to judge.

So, first point - "Women are subjected to violence at the hands of men on a daily basis. The missing and murdered women were killed by men. That’s why the sexualization of inequity matters and that’s why images of an RCMP officer posing in sadistic scenes with submissive women matters."

Sorry, but no. Just like we wouldn't take a lesbian officer off a case because it involves a gay couple, or a white officer off a case that involved racism, we cannot start policing the bedroom and stating that officers are not sufficiently objective in cases that involve sexual/gendered violence, just because they might enjoy - and please read this carefully - CONSENSUAL MIMICKING OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE, NOT SEXUAL VIOLENCE ITSELF. If Brown had actually ever committed violence against a woman, I would agree he should be bannned from law enforcement for the rest of his life. But unless we're going to start telling meat-eaters that they can't work for animal protection charities, dentists that they can't ever eat candy, and doctors that they shouldn't smoke (Ha! every the medical establishment in the country would be deserted in minutes), we cannot demand that invidual's private lives be dragged into their workplaces and used to condemn them on entirely spurious grounds.

This brings me to my second point. Murphy regularly fails to differentiate between actual non-consensual activities and fantasy 'consensual non-consent'. She seems convinced that our culture is so unequal, so hell-bent on abusing, silencing and even killing women, that women who enjoy sexual submission "are unable to clearly differentiate between free will and internalized self-hatred" (Mollena Williams), and that there's just no possibility of enjoying things like rape fantasies without automatically being a sad victim of the patriarchy. But Murphy offers no actual evidence for this beyond her own distaste for Jim Brown's activities, and her own hatred of a culture of sexual violence. Well, funnily enough I hate the way our culture hides, apologises for and blames women for sexual violence too. But I also hate being condescended to by feminists who assume they have the key to the One True Enlightened Way of having sex, and write me off as a brainwashed dupe of rape culture who is incapable of self-examination, just because I participate in BDSM.

And no, I don't believe the 'free will defence' is adequate when it comes to explaining tastes for BDSM - but what I do find interesting is that I'm required to defend it at all, whereas the feminists who are judging me are never asked to turn the mirror back on themselves and analyse their own conditioning at the hands of society. What makes the likes of Murphy think she is any more objective than a feminist kinkster who has done her reading and her research, gone on the marches and waved the placards, but still wants to be sexually submissive at the end of the day? As Cliff Pervocracy puts it "It's impossible for anyone to make a decision free from harmful social influences. Why single out kinky women?"

Murphy's analogy of wearing make-up but not claiming it as a feminist act is an interesting one which I think actually shows that you can participate in an activity, be aware of why you're doing it, be aware of the social influences that have contributed to it, and be OK with it. Murphy doesn't say whether her own make-up habit causes her to call women without make-up ugly, or go out into the streets and force lipstick onto unsuspecting girl's faces, but I'm guessing it probably doesn't. However, whilst awarding herself the ability to be self-critical, at the same time she is implying that Cpl Jim Brown's penchant for BDSM means he is incapable of intelligent self-examination or separating his private life from his work. And I think that's a really fucking patronising assumption to make.

To think that men who dominate consenting female partners just go ahead and start tying up and beating women without a second thought is to show just how little you know about kink. I've spoken to many male doms who describe the guilt and shame they went through in processing their desire to tie up, spank or 'force' a woman into sex (PLEASE note quote marks, they are there for a very important reason). Many say their desires felt at odds with their culture and upbringing, where they were taught to respect and never harm women. So much for this idea that we're always constantly bombarded with messages that tell us to hurt, degrade and discard women. Jay Wiseman even writes that he considered suicide if his desires did not subside, and it was only by finding a willing female partner that he began to understand the difference between actually harming women, and enacting erotic power struggles in a safe and respectful environment.

Of course, the kink-hating feminists will probably be sneering 'Oh boo hoo, poor guy, what about teh menz, god forbid they have to stop and consider their privilege for a second!'. I guess suggesting that men might have the ability to be self-critical as well as us feminists is a bridge too far for some, and I would venture that the reason Murphy and other anti-kink feminists snort at the idea Jim Brown could be a 'man of integrity' is that perhaps they just don't associate men with integrity full stop. The notion that male dom/fem sub BDSM must originate from a patriarchal model of contempt for women assumes a) that erotic power play is synonymous with violence and hatred, and b) that only a man who hates or wishes to degrade women could participate in it. I think you've got to have a pretty fucking low opinion of men in the first place to make that assumption.

Ultimately, if you believe that eroticising power dynamics which may or may not have their root in sexism (many would argue that BDSM can mimic all kinds of power dynamics - racial, class-based, familial, academic, workplace, human-to-animal - and that male/female roles are just one of many that can be chosen) is dangerous for society and women as a whole, you're not going to see Jim Brown as fit for investigating crimes against women. But if Meghan Murphy is asking me to stop harping on about 'my kink' as a defence for the likes of Brown, then in return I'm demanding that anti-kink feminists stop using their own sexual prejudices as a means to condemn him.

Round-up

Here's my latest post for Women's View on News, about one woman's mission to speak out about sexual violence in Malawi.

And some recent posts from my Bitch blog series, on lesbian BDSM, safewords and whether the term 'vanilla' is becoming an insult.

Happy reading.

Victims do deserve more protection in court...

...it's just a shame that this has been wilfully ignored until a massively high-profile case like the trial for the murder of Milly Dowler, brought it to the public's attention.

It's no news to any feminist that victims of rape have historically been treated appallingly in court, and despite token attempts to tighten up on how much a victim themselves can be 'put on trial', there's still a long way to go. In the past, rape victims have had to endure cross-examination about their sexual history, sometimes by their rapist himself, and have had their clothing and underwear paraded in front of a jury in an attempt to undermine their credibility as a 'believable' victim of rape. I asked a lawyer friend if he would hesitate to use such tactics if he was defending an alleged rapist, and he replied in the negative: "My only priority as a lawyer is to win the case" he said, adding "I'll use anything I can to make the victim less believable".

It seems these were the exact tactics that the defence team for Levi Bellfield, now convicted of Milly Dowler's murder, decided to opt for. They dragged the Dowler family's name through the proverbial mud, exposing Mr Dowler's prediliction for bondage and speculating that Milly's discovery of his bondage equipment may have led to her running away (although it seems the seed they were really trying to plant in the jury's mind was that of Mr Dowler being some kind of sexual sadist and ergo possibly the murderer himself), and attempting to paint Mrs Dowler as a depressive, unstable person who was a bad mother and who favoured her other daughter over Milly. Private letters and journals were read out, depicting Milly as an isolated, unloved teen. Given the amount of evidence clearly indicating Bellfield's guilt, the only justification for these irrelevances being admitted in his defence, was as a blatant attempt to distract the jury's attention from the fact he was guilty as sin.

But that is how it works in a British court - as a newspaper commentator pointed out, what Bellfield's defence team did may have been immoral, but it was not illegal. The same goes for the appalling treatment doled out to rape victims, who often find themselves more 'on trial' than their attackers. Yet no one has been up in arms about their ordeals, and I can't help but think no one would be so interested in this case if it didn't attract the prurient interest of a dirty-minded tabloid-consuming public, who love nothing better than a gruesome murder case involving a pretty young girl and a nice hint of sexual deviance. If that sounds disrespectful to the dead, then please be assured that my attack is not on those whose lives are violated by twisted, deviant psychopaths, but on those in the judicial process who attempt to make the violation worse, and those in the gutter press who pretend to be on the victim and victim's family's side, all the while regurgitating degrading private details of their lives and splashing them across tabloid front pages.

But it does provide some interesting food for thought. Imagine a rape victim trying to obtain justice if the defence for her attacker had found out she was into bondage and kept a ball gag and rubber hood in her attic? You know she wouldn't have a chance at obtaining a fair trial, much less a conviction for her attacker. "She was kinky your honour, she liked it rough - just look at the evidence." Case closed. Imagine a rape victim being believed once the defence team have done some digging and found out she has a history of depression? Just look at the public dissection of the woman who accused Dominique Strauss-Khan of rape - she's been accused of being mentally unstable, a pathological liar, a gold-digger, a prostitute, HIV-positive....Why are we suddenly so surprised that victims are dragged through the mud just as much as their alleged attackers are, as if the Milly Dowler case was the first time this had ever happened in a courtroom? If only.

If the promised review into how victims of crime and their families are treated brings an examination of the disproportionately harsh treatment doled out to rape victims in court, fantastic. But I don't think it will. We're so used to it going on that we don't even bother to comment on or analyse it any more, even when presented with a golden opportunity for it. Yes, I feel deeply sorry for the Dowler family and the insult they have had added to the already permanent injury of their daughter's murder by the treatment they received during the trial. But they are not the first to be metaphorically violated and invaded by a British court, and they will not be the last.

I'm appalled that Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a woman who has spent a great deal of time admirably taking to task Islamic fundamentalism and its shitty treatment of women, seems to be adopting the exact mindsets of those who believe sexual violence is - at least partly - the fault of the victim. But that's exactly what she seems to have done in her article in Monday's Independent, "How does dressing like a 'slut' help protect women?". It's the kind of knee-jerk victim-blaming and rape apologist tactics that I'd expect to find in The Daily Mail, and is therefore especially worrying when you consider that it's actually from a supposedly enlightened, liberal woman. Firstly, Alibhai-Brown lazily stereotypes and wilfully misunderstands the concept of Slutwalk, declaring that it consisted of women "dressed to pull...in uplifted bras, thongs, Playboy outfits", ignoring those who marched in jeans and jumpers, or those who held up signs saying that the latter is exactly what they were wearing when they were raped, and posing the question "...did I deserve it?". If you believe Alibhai-Brown, the answer goes something along the lines of "less than those naive tarts who wore miniskirts".

It's disconcerting to see an intelligent woman buy so thoroughly into the victim-blaming trend by not only equating 'provocative' dress with invitation to rape, but even going so far as to defend the Toronto policeman who inadvertently triggered the whole Slutwalk phenomenon with his comments. "Surely he was only saying women need to be sharp and savvy?". Um, no Yasmin. He wasn't saying that at all. He was perpetuating several gross, offensive and repeatedly disproved myths, those being that:

1) Rapists are not really responsible for their actions

2) Rape is just really sexual desire that gets out of control

3) Rape is only committed by strangers in dark alleys who leap upon scantily-clad women.

I've written about why those three statements don't stand up to scrutiny so much that I can barely be bothered to repeat myself, but it seems that the message still isn't getting through. How can Alibhai-Brown acknowledge that "women in burkas...are still as likely to be victims as the flesh-flashing demonstrators" in one breath, then go on to lay the blame for sexual violence solely at the feet of those very 'flesh flashers', in the next? How can she believe that rape is caused by the "flesh-baring daily dress...sex mime" if it happens just as much TO WOMEN WHO COVER EVERY INCH OF THEIR FLESH!?!?

She tries to dodge criticism by playing the class and race card, claiming that Slutwalk is the premise of pampered middle class ignoramuses with nothing better to do than patronise 'true' victims, and speculating that "there weren't many women on the march who have endured domestic rape or have been trafficked." Well Yasmin, how would any of us be able to find that out, considering one of the main problems surrounding rape is how its victims are forced into silence and shame by attitudes not dissimilar to your own? Bafflingly, she then brings in a story of an African cleaner being sexually abused by her British employer, as if to imply that Slutwalk is somehow an insult to 'real' rape victims, who presumably have to be poor, downtrodden, and definitely not wearing anything sexy, to qualify.

Although Alibhai-Brown claims to understand that rape is a heinous crime whether committed by Gaddafi's henchmen in Libya, "by soldiers in the Congo, [or] by civilian blokes in the home and on the streets", her words elsewhere in the article directly contradict this. In fact, it's less an article than an incoherent mish-mash of grotesque stereotypes and unsupported statements such as "there is more evidence that drunkenness among young women (and their revealing clothing in some cases) make them vulnerable to sexual assault". I'd really like to see the 'evidence' that supports that massively loaded statement - and I'd also like to hear what Alibhai-Brown thinks makes toddlers and grandmothers vulnerable to sexual assault, seeing as she seems to believe that rape victims are somehow guilty of collusion in their assault.

As I've said a wearisome number of times before, the blaming of a scrap of material or a glimpse of thigh for a man forcing his penis into a woman's vagina, anus or mouth, is not just bizarre and offensive because of what it says about women. It's also because of what it says about men. A-B seems content to believe that the modern world and all its provocative accoutrement has resulted in a society where "even more men seem to defile babies and toddlers, their own teenager children and partners, and violate innocent females, the elderly included" (ah. So there are SOME 'innocent' victims, are there Yasmin? How old, young or covered by cloth does one have to be to qualify exactly?). Her thinking seems to be that, as hemlines have shortened, men's brains have short-circuited, and rape and violence have increased because these middle class bitches just won't keep their cleavages covered. Wow. If men really are as basically-wired and easily provoked to violate a woman as Alibhai-Brown seems to think, isn't there a fairly strong argument for institutionalising, electronically tagging, blinding or at least castrating the lot of them?

But funnily enough, I'm not someone who wants to do that. I do believe the majority of men to be intelligent, logical and in possession of reason, and strangely enough, as a Slutwalker's placard pointed out, not compelled to commit rape by mere items of clothing (or lack thereof). Rape is entirely caused by the decision of vile, sadistic individuals, who are not just 'overly horny' or 'a bit too rough in the bedroom' or 'unable to control themselves'. Quite the opposite - they are calculating, cruel and determined to inflict pain and humiliation on a woman, and know that forcibly penetrating her body is an effective way to do it. No one rapes just because they got too aroused at the sight of an expanse of uncovered leg. They do it for the same reason they would defecate on a person - to shame, subordinate and silence them.

So Yasmin, please adopt some silence of your own until you can abandon your scarily right-wing woman-hating attitude, and consider that perhaps there is some truth to the statement that "rape predates miniskirts". None of us are naive enough to believe, or propagate the belief, that the world is safe for women. That was never the point of Slutwalk. The point was to say that the world SHOULD be safe for women, and no one should ever stop trying to make it that way, and a world in which rape is excused and accepted is a world which can never be excused and never be accepted. My last words to Yasmin, and your charming (interestingly all male) supporters who followed your article with letters to the Independent proclaiming that "The feelings aroused in men are something over which they have no control" and "If those women...don't want to be mistaken for prostitutes, they shouldn't wear the uniform" (because it's fine to rape prostitutes, isn't it chaps?) can only be another slogan from a Slutwalk placard: 100% OF RAPES ARE CAUSED BY RAPISTS.

ARRRRRRRRRRRGGHHHHH

Just when you thought things might be getting better, shit like this comes along to remind you that the powers that be remain utterly ignorant, and dangerously misguided, about pretty much anything to do with rape, sexual assault, or women's bodily autonomy in general.

I thought there might be some kind of turning point when I noticed the reporting over the sexual assault allegations against Dominique Strauss-Kahn wasn't the usual fest of victim-blaming misogyny that rape cases usually descend straight into. For once, the media seemed to be focusing on the behaviour of the accused, rather than the accuser, and suggesting that perhaps it's the (alleged) rapist's sexual history we should be examining when considering an allegation, rather than trying to undermine an already traumatised victim by trawling through their past and making them out to be a slut. Whilst headlines like 'PERV' aren't helping anyone, and not exactly upholding the whole 'innocent until proven guilty' thang, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't refreshing to see that instead of 'WHAT A LYING WHORE', which is what rape victims have had to put with since time immemorial.

But today Kenneth Clarke, the British 'Justice' Secretary, has caused my faith to plummet right back through the floor, with his proposal to halve convicted rapists' sentences if they plead guilty, and his comments by way of explanation that: "[Rape] includes date rape and 17 year-olds having intercourse. Serious rape, I don't think many judges give five years for a forcible rape, frankly, the tariff is longer for that and a serious rape where there's violence and an unwilling woman, the tariff's much longer than that."

I can't even begin to unravel the tangle of misunderstandings, misconceptions, and frankly outright falsehoods contained in this sentence. But let me take a few pot shots. Firstly, I'd be happy to see the phrase 'date rape' banished from the face of the earth forevermore. It's one of the most despicable, dishonest, misleading terms I've ever come across, precisely because of the implication it carries that there are 'different types' of rape, and therefore some must be worse than others. Like the term 'domestic violence', it gives this type of assault on women a cosy little niche of its own, lessening the impact of the words 'rape' and 'violence' by adding a qualifier to them, ergo 'Oh, she was raped, but it was only date rape, so not as bad'. Also, what the fuck exactly is date rape? Does it only count if you went for dinner and drinks beforehand? Or does there have to be a movie and dancing too? Basically, it's used to cover pretty much all forms of acquaintance rape, which is the most worrying part of the trend, because acquaintance rape is the most common kind, the most underreported, and the hardest kind of rape to obtain a conviction for. So, um, can someone explain to me why people feel the need to erode the seriousness of this crime even more?

Sure, people are gonna come back with the usual shite about 'Oh, if two drunk students fall into bed together and neither can remember what happened, that's not as bad as someone being dragged into a dark alley at knifepoint'. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't - I wouldn't know, being fortunate enough not to have ever had either happen to me. However, what most people forget is that the 'dark alley at knifepoint' scenario is RARE. Fucking rare. In the 2003 survey of thousands of women, conducted by the Home Office with a view to amending the Sexual Offences law, it was found that only 8% of rape victims reported being attacked by a complete stranger. EIGHT PER CENT. That leaves 92% of those cases as technical 'date rapes', or at least 'acquaintance rapes', because they were committed by male friends, neighbours, colleagues, family members and - in 45% of cases, by husbands or male partners. Are we really expected to agree that the 8% who were horribly violated by a stranger, suffered a more serious assault, than the 45% who were raped by the men they loved and presumably trusted the most, or the 37% who were attacked by men they thought they were safe with, in their own houses, workplaces or social spaces?

By conflating 'date rape' with statutory rape Clarke muddies the waters even more. No, of course statutory rape isn't always the same. It certainly can be - it can involve force, coercion, and a massive inequality of power. The law is there to protect children - if you fuck a 9 year-old, it doesn't matter if she was 'willing'. She's 9, and you're a rapist. Go straight to jail, do not pass Go. However, the oft-trotted out example of a 15 year old and a 16 year old having consensual sex? Yeah, OK, it's not the same, and few police in their right mind would waste their time seeking a prosecution. But to put that latter case in the same category of your husband, boyfriend, friend, neighbour, colleague or the guy in the local paper shop turning on you and violating your body in the most horrendous, degrading way possible? It's just fucking madness. And it's terrifying that any member of our government is making that comparison, let alone daring to do so publicly.

I can only hope that Clarke's words come from ignorance rather than true misogyny - sadly, I think in a lot of people's cases, and yes a lot of them do happen to be male, the ignorance comes from being in a position of total inexperience. If you've never lived your life under the threat of rape, you might not bother to try and understand the issues at work. I hope many men will prove me wrong by speaking out in the wake of Clarke's vile assertions, and yes I know women can be evil victim-blamers as well, although I think their mindset comes from a different, more understandable place (the 'it'll never happen to me' camp). But whether Clarke's just an ignorant old dickhead, or a foul misogynist, is not the issue. The issue is what he said, and what those words demonstrated about his attitude to women, rape and justice. He does not speak for us. He does not uphold justice for us. Therefore he has to go. NOW.

Finally, some anti-rape campaigns aimed at men...

...one by my own local constabulary, Thames Valley Police, and one by Lambeth Council.
Are the police and local authorities finally listening to feminists? I'm wary of getting too excited, but it seems like some common sense is finally starting to permeate. More campaigns like this please.

Watching The Wright Stuff is rarely a good idea...

...but when you're killing time at home it's bound to appear on your TV screen sooner or later. How I've watched it so much without melting into a rage-induced puddle, or at least phoning in to scream abuse at Matthew Wright for his constant ill-concealed misogyny, I'm not sure, but the occasional word of sense that is spoken by the panel or callers is probably all that restrains me. On various occasions I've seen this 'host' portray women as money-grubbing, superficial, ignorant bitches who deserve what they get if their husband cheats on them while they're pregnant because they must've 'driven him away' (yes I was watching a recent discussion of Coleen and Wayne Rooney, and Wright's constant attempts to goad callers into saying that pregnant women are responsible for their husband's infidelity was damn sickening). Today he was harping on the subject of 'No Right To Get Shirty If Things Get Flirty', or rather the question of whether women have any reasonable expectation of, oooh, I dunno, RESPECT, if they DARE to wear revealing clothes.

What was concerning was not that anyone dared to come right out and say 'Yes, if you wear a short skirt, you get what you deserve and you deserve what you get, ho', but more the utterly confused thinking of the host and panel on the issue. They were all keen to get in the disclaimer that 'no one deserves to be raped' and OBVIOUSLY Judge Pickles (judge who was famous in 80s for telling rape victims they 'asked for it') was wrong, but then they all kinda pissed over the good those words achieved, by going on to say that women 'must shoulder some of the responsibility' if men leer, shout or otherwise treat them like crap for showing some cleavage. Matthew Wright and the two female panelists all said that 'I do believe that ideally women should have the right to wear whatever they want, but that's not the world we live in'. Yeah, I guess I believe that black people have the right not to be called wogs, and that gay people have the right not to have their heads kicked in, but that's not the world we live in, so we should all just roll over and submit to the hatred and ignorance infecting our society, right? For fuck's sake. Was there ever a lazier, more analysis-dodging excuse for vile behaviour than 'Oh, that's just the way it's always been, you'll never change things, so just shut the fuck up and submit'? And yet at the moment that seems to be our answer to everything - why prostitution, rape, violence against women and every shitty tributary of those behaviours will never go away. It's always been like that - so don't even bother trying to change it, sista.

What was also noticeably absent from the discussion (and is soooo often absent from any discussion of male ill-treatment of women) was the behaviour of men. No one, at any point, raised the notion of where cat-calls, leering, sleazing and groping actually COME FROM. No one made any suggestion that the blame and responsibility for these behaviours lie SOLELY with their MALE PERPETRATORS. And frighteningly, no one saw the connection between saying 'women shoulder some of the responsibility' for these acts, and blaming women for sexual violence. There IS a connection. I'm not saying that every knuckle-dragging missing link who shouts 'Nice tits' on a night out is a rapist, but the fact is, such a person is exhibiting a lack of respect, empathy and consideration for women that sows the seeds for sexual violence. Such a man may never do anything more than shout or leer, but nonetheless he is seated on a spectrum of systematic disrespect for women's bodily autonomy, which starts with the supposedly 'harmless' acts of verbal street abuse, and ends in rape. Thinking it's OK to yell sexualised insults at someone because they are dressed in any kind of way stems from thinking that a) everything women do is for male attention, and dammit, they should be grateful for whatever they get, and b) women's bodies are not really their own, they're for public consumption and therefore, why show it off if you don't want me to scream filth about it, sugar?

Matthew Wright was very close to the crux of the issue when he made the point that blaming women for verbal sexual abuse makes as much sense as 'covering them all up with burkas', but sadly failed to go further and explain why. Burka or mini-skirt, hijab or high heels, the very fact we focus constantly on what WOMEN are wearing, shows that we still see women as being the 'gatekeepers' of sexual activity, and men as the aggressors. No one would ever seriously make the argument that a man wearing tight jeans is 'asking for' a woman or a gay man to grab his backside, because what men wear, where men go, how men act, is never up for analysis. Why else would the alcohol consumption of the victims in rape trials be so disproportionately focused on, when it's actually the rapist who is far more likely to have consumed alcohol? Because, as our society currently operates, men hold no responsibility for their behaviour - it all falls to women.

Forget for a moment how horrendous this is for women, I think it's also disturbing just what a vile picture of men this assumption paints. As the current thinking goes, men are mentally retarded, lacking in all self-control or self-awareness, naturally violent, sexually obsessed, and incapable of seeing a woman in a short skirt (because Christ knows, no one's ever seen one of those before, and GOD are they a provocative sight when we've probably all seen enough internet nudity to last us a lifetime) without behaving in ways that would embarrass an ape. Pretty much all the men I know would be heftily insulted by this depiction, and would rather die than ever publicly sleaze on a woman. Yet we're all taught to accept that This Is How Men Are, and it's really quite a fucking sad indictment of what lows our society is sinking to.

I could rant for days about this kind of shit, but I think the fantastic Tairrie B put it better than I could when she demanded a world where women have
"the right to dress sexy when and where I want
Without being harrassed for it
Or being told that I asked for it"

If we're willing to wake the fuck up and stop making excuses of the kind I witnessed this morning, we'll come a lot closer to achieving it.

Anonymity, Rape and the Law

I can't say I'm optimistic about the new Conservative-dominated coalition government in terms of making positive steps forward for women. With a 'Minister for Equality' who has repeatedly voted against equality legislation, and who has no interest in banning Page 3 (hmm, wouldn't have anything to do with the fact the Conservatives are funded by the Murdoch empire, would it now?!), it seems that they're happy to rely on the old trick of putting someone with XX chromosomes at the forefront and thinking that will be enough to satisfy us gullible females. Just because someone's got a vagina doesn't make them pro-woman. Just look at the new female president of Costa Rica - anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-emergency contraception. Does make you wonder why, if these women really do believe that wimmin should be reproducing without choice or consent, they're not at home, barefoot, pregnant and chained to the kitchen sink themselves.

Anyway, this post wasn't actually intended (just) to bitch about the predictable shortcomings of politicians when it comes to protecting women's rights, but it was to deal with the deeply controversial new proposal revealed this week, namely the move to grant anonymity to those accused of rape. Feminists are in up arms, labelling this move a form of rape apologism, supporting the idea that men need to be 'protected' from the evil allegation-flinging of women, and further spreading the vile myth that many rapes are reported falsely (when in fact it's reckoned that there are fewer fraudulent rape claims than there are false car insurance claims). I've already been invited to sign a petition demanding that the government drop the proposal, yet I find myself hovering over the dotted line. I feel extremely torn on this issue. On the one hand, I agree that this move could be disastrous in terms of preventing victims of serial rapists coming forward; the case of serial rapist taxi-driver John Worboys is a recent case that springs to mind. However, the fact that rape victims need encouraging to 'come forward' in the first place says it all about how confident women feel with the current system - it's typical of the culture of rape apology that so many of Worboys' victims simply went home, said nothing, and lived with the horror of what had happened to them. Going to the police was not an option because they didn't think they would be believed. First police need to be trained and educated in believing victims, treating them as human beings and credible witnesses, and evaluating alleged rapists' behaviour and past actions to establish patterns. Once that's achieved, I don't think it would matter so much if alleged rapists weren't named, as police could still appeal for information from anyone who was attacked by 'a taxi-driver based in South London, grey hair, early 50s', and so strengthen a case without being accused of wrecking anyone's reputation.

There remains the problem of why just rape? Why not anonymity for murder suspects, alleged drug dealers, paedophiles, terrorists and so on? Is it wise to assign such gravitas to the effect of a rape accusation on a man's life whilst ignoring the effects of being accused of other heinous crimes? It does seem to carry with it the troubling implication that this crime in particular needs anonymity for its accused because this crime in particular is the subject of so many false accusations. This is not a helpful or realistic view of the 94% of rape cases in which the accused walks free - many of these cases implode long before a 'not guilty' verdict is ever reached, due to police mishandling evidence, judicial hostility to the victim, and victims being pressured/encouraged to drop their case on the basis that 'it's your word against his, you won't be believed'. What does a 'not guilty' verdict even mean in a culture where a woman who sustained genital and anal injuries consistent with a violent rape was disbelieved in court because she was wearing skinny jeans, which apparently can't be removed 'without consent'? It's certainly not the immediate admission of female dishonesty that the conservative media would have us believe it is - rather, it's a reflection of a grossly flawed judiciary and ignorant, biased surrounding society, which assumes female dissembling and male innocence before anyone even enters the courtroom. Do we really need another piece of legislation to back up the idea that 'men need protecting from lying bitches'?

However, the one possible benefit of this legislation is the flipside of that argument; if a law were brought in to make males accused of rape anonymous, then their accusers can no longer have the above distasteful piece of misogyny flung at them. It would no longer be possible to 'ruin' a man by making a rape accusation (because we all know those are so easy to make, and so fun to sustain) against him, therefore the argument that women 'cry rape' just to get revenge on men will no longer have any weight. There'll be no more sensationalist articles in The Daily Mail focusing on Steve, 35, from Leeds, whose existence was RUINED by the allegations of some evil slut, and has lost his job, been forced to move, had to change his name etc etc because of the 'stigma' applied to him. (And yes, to be falsely accused of anything would be horrendous, and our predatory media play a great part in encouraging public hounding and vigilante behaviour which would be enough to drive anyone to suicide. But there's absolutely no evidence to show that there are any more false accusations about rape than there are about any other crime, so an outcry specific to accused rapists is totally unjustified.) There could even be a shift of focus, from the tiny percentage of men affected by the 'horror' of a false accusation, to the huge percentage of women affected by the horror of a genuine rape. I'm probably dreaming - the right-wing media will surely find something else to harangue traumatised women about. But I can't be unequivocal about condemning this legislation - whilst it troubles me in many aspects, I think there could just be a silver lining - even if it's one totally unintended by its patriarchy-loving policymakers.

No good can come of watching the Virgin TV channel...

...but hey, sometimes a girl gets bored late at night and flicks over. And what do Virgin like to show at night? Programmes all about sex, loosely disguised in the form of documentaries. I knew I was probably heading for trouble selecting 'Why Men Watch Porn', but it wasn't as horrific as it could have been. The attitude was pretty predictable, starting from the perspective that porn is fine and groovy, with no discussion of its potential to harm women, and that consuming it is 'just something normal guys do'. It was even mildly interesting to watch the results of a study involving men of different age groups rating their interest in different types of porn - and somewhat heartening to see men from all the age groups stating their lack of interest in using it. The reaction of the men's (female) partners to what the study 'revealed' about their sexual tastes was a bit tiresome - the women seemed happy to make excuses for male consumption of porn viz arguments that 'men are just wired differently', that women can distract themselves with 'a bath or a book' or that when we 'get the horn', we're capable of waiting for satisfaction, whereas men have to be satisfied Right Now, Dammit. I thought the women's words were evidence of just how internalised the modern stance on porn has become, that being: it's fine, men need it, we couldn't possibly understand because we're women, there's no point trying to argue against it. I also wondered if any of these women had ever 'had the horn' to the point where a bath or a book just wouldn't do it, and only a date with Ms Right Hand would suffice - cos I know have!

What was probably most dismaying though, was the final throwaway 'stat', which was that 32% of men surveyed thought porn reduced sex crime. That's an argument I get reeeal tired of hearing, simply because it seems to rely on a fatal misunderstanding of what sex crime is, and why it's committed. However, it means acknowledging that the opposition to that argument (that porn increases sex crime), also comes from barking up the wrong tree, which is anathema to some anti-porn feminists. I just think that this simplistic view of male sexuality needs to be dispensed with. If you're sadistic and fucked up enough that you're actually considering raping someone, I doubt that any alternative form of outlet is going to be enough. Rape isn't just about 'needing to have sex really badly' (and please, can we stop saying prostitution is justified because it somehow 'stops rape'? Newsflash - prostitution and rape still continue side by side) or wanting to do something so kinky that no woman would put up with it. Wanting sex and not always getting it is part of life - normal men and women can put up with that. They may masturbate, use porn, or just distract themselves, but to suggest that people rape because they're just too randy, is to fatally misunderstand what rape is about. It's not about sex, or sexual release, or satisfaction. It's about power, humiliation, domination, and controlling another person's body. If that is what you truly desire, then watching porn isn't going to stop you from wanting to go out and get it. Unfortunately, I think too many people 'normalise' rapists as 'regular guys who just got carried away because damn women won't put out all the time'. As if there's never been a rapist who was already in a sexual relationship with a wife or a girlfriend, or who had access to stacks of porn, or who used prostitutes, and went out and raped anyway.

However, as I said, this means also acknowledging the limitations of porn when it comes to influencing men's sexual behaviour. Now, it's important not to make blanket statements about this. When I say I don't think porn causes rape, that's not to say I think it has no impact whatsoever on the sexual landscape. But, as I said above, since rape has very little to do with sex, it stands to reason that its connection with on-screen depictions of sex, will only ever be fleeting. Yes, a violent porn film might give you an idea of how to violate someone, but it's not going to make you go out and do it. The impulse for sexual violence needs to be there already. Porn doesn't turn ordinary men into rapists - it doesn't have the power. It may give men who are already raping or considering rape, some methods for terrorising their victims, but that's where the connection ends. However, that's not to say I don't see the connection with porn and rape culture - one where rape isn't taken seriously because our porned society has numbed us to sexual violence. If we're all exposed to, or able to easily access, porn that sends out the message that women love to be beaten and raped, then our understanding of rape as a crime is going to be affected - even if it's just subconsciously. How many times have we heard rapists defended on the basis that 'she just liked it rough, your honour'? Only this week five men were acquitted of the rape of a woman on the basis that she had had fantasies about group sex, clearly sending out the message that if a woman has a kinky fantasy, she should be prepared to enact it with any man, at all times, and has no right to say no. Something's clearly fucked up - but it's not porn causing the rapes directly. It's a society so numbed to sexual violence, partly by increasingly violent porn, that's allowing rapists to go free, and sending out the message to would-be rapists that they'll always get away with it.

I wouldn't call myself an anti-porn feminist though. I don't believe that repression of human sexuality is ever going to lead to anything good. I think that porn can be produced responsibly, and that porn which depicts violence/coercion can be framed in the language of choice and consent, as BDSM porn always has been. It's the mainstream porn which steals the acts of BDSM porn, whilst leaving out the crucial aspects of consent (and failing to emphasise, as many BDSM sites do, that the actors are just that, actors playing a part and that This Is Not Reality) which I believe does the most harm. It's how to keep the good and dispense with the swathes of bad which is troubling. It was also telling on the programme that many men described a scene of anal sex - which would have been viewed as shocking and explicit a few decades ago - as 'quite tame'. It seems that the more extreme porn is produced, the more bored we get. Perhaps this is a worrying sign of how people will go to further and further extremes to get satisfaction, or perhaps it's a heartening sign that people recognised porn's limitations and will start to turn away from it, maybe even back to real people and having real sexual relationships. I think we are all capable of learning, and the depiction of men as so deeply influenced by porn that they're unable to shake off its 'conditioning' is more than a tad insulting. In the early days of our relationship, my partner admitted to me that the porn he viewed in his younger days made him think that women's genitalia 'worked a lot easier than it really does'. Ha ha, no shit, I remember thinking, and I didn't feel ashamed or guilty about my complex, hard-to-please body, but rather pleased that he had encountered a real woman and learned a lesson.

With thanks to the London Feminist Network for passing this one on...

This was posted in response to the predictable yet still deeply jarring campaign telling women how to avoid being raped over the Christmas season:

"A lot has been said about how to prevent rape. Women should learn self-defence. Women should lock themselves in their houses after dark. Women shouldn't have long hair and women shouldn't wear short skirts. Women shouldn't leave drinks unattended. Fuck, they shouldn't dare to get drunk at all.

Instead of that bullshit, how about:


If a woman is drunk, don't rape her. If a woman is walking alone at night, don't rape her. If a women is drugged and unconscious, don't rape her. If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don't rape her. If a woman is jogging in a park at 5AM, don't rape her. If a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you're still hung up on, don't rape her. If a woman is asleep in her bed, don't rape her. If a woman is asleep in your bed, don't rape her. If a woman is doing her laundry, don't rape her. If a woman is in a coma, don't rape her. If a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don't rape her. If a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don't rape her. If a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don't rape her. If your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don't rape her. If your step-daughter is watching TV, don't rape her.


If you break into a house and find a woman there, don't rape her. If your friend thinks it's okay to rape someone, tell him it's not, and that he's not your friend. If your "friend" tells you he raped someone, report him to the police. If your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there's an unconscious woman upstairs and it's your turn, don't rape her, call the police and report him as a rapist.


Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, and sons of friends that it's not okay to rape someone.


Don't just tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape. Don't imply that she could have avoided it if she'd only done/not done x, y, or z. Don't imply that it's in any way her fault. Don't let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he "got some" with the drunk girl. Don't perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions. You can too help yourself. Rape is not about sex, it's about control and power, and what kind of power comes from taking advantage of others? No power anyone should ever desire."

Couldn't have put it better myself. Share with everyone you know - especially the men.

It's just been on both BBC and Channel 4 news that a rape victim has had the full amount of compensation for her attack restored to her, after originally having it cut by 25% for the sole reason that she had been drinking on the night of the attack. This was deemed 'contributory' behaviour. It has also emerged that 14 other victims were subject to the same reductions - all 15 women have now had this ruling overturned.

The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority originally told the woman in question that the reason for the reduction was that "the evidence shows that your excessive consumption of alcohol was a contributing factor in the incident". This was not the woman's first experience of indifference or even outright hostility from the authorities - her rapist was never caught, and she complained about the way her case was handled by the police, leading to two officers being disciplined and her receiving an official apology. We can only wonder what those officers did, or failed to do, to warrant this. My guess is that their attitudes were probably similar to that of CICA's, and their victim-blaming mentality meant they did not investigate the case to the fullness of their powers. How can we blame them for viewing the victim as a drunken slut who 'asked for it', when the highest powers in the land send out a message saying exactly that?

Obviously it's positive that some sense has prevailed, and that 15 women have been vindicated in the fight for justice - although I'm sure no amount of compensation helps to erase the pain, terror and humiliation of a rape, nor the fact that the majority of rapists get away with it, as they did in the first woman's case. But, the fact that in these supposedly enlightened time, that a ruling body can even think about blaming a woman for her attack, is stunning. As the victim pointed out simply - "there is nothing you can do to prevent yourself being raped. It is not illegal to go out and have a drink , it is illegal to rape somebody." So where on earth does this tendency to blame the victim come from, and how has it been allowed to go unchallenged to the point where ruling justice authorities can use it to abuse women who have already been through hell? Is it not depressing enough that the chances of securing a conviction after your ordeal are absolutely pitiful? That, all things being equal, the man who committed one of the vilest acts a human being can ever inflict upon another human being, will get away with it?

From the BBC News website: Lisa Longstaff, of Women Against Rape, said the original decision by the CICA was symptomatic of the "blame culture" experienced by rape victims. 

"It used to be that they were always blamed if they were wearing a short skirt, today it's that they were drinking," she said. "It's very important for women who've been victims of rape to get compensation because often it's the only acknowledgement you are going to get that you have been a victim of crime, given that the conviction rate in this country is only 6%."

So, is there a connection between the low conviction rate and these attitudes? I fail to believe they are mere coincidence. There seems to be two twisted beliefs that intertwine to make women's fight in the courtrooms nigh impossible. One, that rape doesn't really exist - there's only women who change their minds the next day, or can't remember what they did because they were drinking, or who are a bit slutty so make accusations to cover up their hunger for sex, or to ruin a man's reputation. Quite where the idea that the 'easiest' way to ruin a man's reputation is to make a rape accusation, and hence it's what most rape complainants are really doing, is baffling. Anyone who's done even a smidgen of reading about what goes into even getting a rape case to trial will know that it's mentally and physically exhausting, harrowing and humiliating for the victim, and will most likely end in acquittal. But then we have the other, more sinister thread of belief that seems to permeate Britain, and that's that rape does go on, but we don't actually care. We see women as 'inviting' attacks through manner of dress, alcohol consumption, flirting. How else can the CICA's words been interpreted? Cutting someone's compensation on grounds that drinking is 'contributory behaviour' - as if the victim is somehow a colluder in their own assault? How can anyone give this illogical guff the time of day unless they believe that women want, or deserve rape? I find it absolutely terrifying. At best, the CICA are grossly confused, out of touch and have chosen the wrong case to try and make an example out of. At worst, they are misogynists who believe women are to blame for the constant acts of sexual violence that are exacted upon them every day, largely without any retribution.

After CICA's u-turn - only under mounting legal pressure and the exposure of it sowmen hating ways - The Ministry of Justice also added it was not its policy to "reduce the level of award to a victim of rape due to alcohol consumption. "This stance supports our view that a victim of rape is not in any way culpable due to alcohol consumption." But this doesn't make it any less terrifying that CICA was able to get away with blaming the victim until now. I wonder who makes up the committe who came out with the now-overturned decision? Can we comfort ourselves by thinking it was a load of grey-haired old white men largely out of touch with modern culture, who still resent women for setting foot outside of the kitchen and can't get their heads round females being anything other than saintly virgins or blameworthy whores? That's the easy get-out. However, it seems women can be each other's worst judges. In a survey of Irish women in Ms. Magazine, one-third of respondents felt rape victims were to blame for their attack. A friend who sat on the jury at a sexual assault trial reported to me his shock at how the female jurors were far more harsh towards, and dismissive of, the testimony of the victim. They all held forth on what they would have done in the situation, how they would have fought the attacker off, and how they didn't believe a rape had taken place due to the lack of physical marks and evidence of a struggle. Think it's just the patriarchy against you in a courtroom? Sounds like it's more likely to be your own sisters taking you to task.

I suggested to my friend that the female jurors' unwillingness to believe the victim - in addition to the fact her story was indeed shaky and inconsistent - was a form of self-protection, a way of immunising themselves from the notion that this humiliating and terrifying ordeal was something that could ever happen to them. 'Oh, I'd kick him in the balls' 'Stupid woman - why didn't she do x?', 'Well, it wouldn't have happened like that if I'd been there.'. Basically, we feed into what CICA wanted us to believe - that there's no such thing as 'REAL' rape, just women who don't fight hard enough or who are too intoxicated or who gave 'mixed messages'. And as long as we can assure ourselves we wouldn't do any of those things, we can rest easy in the smugness that It'll Never Happen To Us. One of the most frightening things to face about rape is that it's most likely to be done by someone you know - and how are you supposed to tally that with everything you're taught? Jessica Valenti hit the nail on the head by pointing out that women are taught to live their lives by a Rape Schedule - where to go, where to avoid, what to wear, who to seek out for protection, how to basically stop a crime that by it's very nature is a crime that takes place whether you try to stop it or not. It is NON CONSENSUAL. You do not 'LET IT HAPPEN' 'INVITE IT' or 'ASK FOR IT'. It is not a 'bit of fun that gets out of hand' 'a bit of slap and tickle', it is a violent and vile act that has NOTHING TO DO WITH SEX. And yet, male responsibility is conspicuous by its absence in all arguments. Everything comes down to the woman - how she behaved, what she did or did not do, and therefore how blameworthy we see her in her own assault.

A total re-examination of attitudes, and a re-education of us all, is needed, if we are ever going to escape a society rapidly becoming so diseased with misogyny that even the highest legal authorities are now spouting what the man and woman in the street secretly believe - that rape is a woman's problem, and women are the ones to be scrutinised whenever and wherever it occurs. We need to bring men and male responsibility into the arena, and face facts that are hard and ugly to face. Men rape. Fathers, brothers, sons, husbands, boyfriends, flatmates, colleagues - the better they are known to you, the more likely they are to be the ones to do it. And they get away with it, because of social prejudices which feed into a confused and lumbering legal system where a woman's integrity is still largely the issue at stake, rather than the moral and sexual behaviour of the defendent. We weight everything upon women's shoulders - the responsibility for avoidance of rape, the responsibility for being raped. Why do we never shift the burden onto those who commit this most vile of woman-hating crimes? If we acknowledge that a woman was raped by her husband, does it mean the rest of us have to look at our husbands and boyfriends with new mistrustful eyes? If we accept that men do take advantage of drunk women, or drug women's drinks on nights out, does it mean our enjoyment of a few Strongbows and a dance at the local club will forever be compromised? If we have to consider that maybe it's not just some freakish loner lurking in an alley who is the danger, and instead often men who appear eminently respectable, with jobs, families, and partners, will it paralyse women to the point where we're afraid to be anywhere, because nowhere is safe?

Education has to start early. We educate children about the dangers of sexual abuse, who to avoid, what to say, what to do. But we also counter this with an assurance of blamelessness - if someone forces you to do something you don't want to do, it isn't your fault, and you should tell on that person. Somewhere on the way to adulthood, this simple and true message gets warped to a point where even going to the police is a huge act of bravery for a rape victim, because of the culture of disbelief and blame, and as in the case of the woman above, a tendency to mishandle and blunder cases that the police are often as badly as educated about as the rest of us. Why aren't we educating boys about what consent really means? Not because it's something that should need spelling out, but so that there are no excuses, no grey areas. Why aren't we teaching boys and girls that rape isn't about a man just 'not being able to help himself' or a woman dressing too provocatively or any of the other illogical bullshit that implies men force themselves upon women simply due to being excessively horny? If that were the case surely the male species would long ago have been imprisoned in zoos and labelled an embarrassment to civilised society. Men know that a short skirt, a low-cut top, a smile, a dance, a drink, a chat, does not give anyone the right over another person's body. They KNOW this. But those who actively want to demand access to someone else's body and are not interested in gaining consent, can hide behind the excuse that They Didn't Know. She smiled at me, your honour, she rubbed against me on the dancefloor, she was drinking, she let me walk her home, she said no but she acted like she meant yes, you know what women are like...the rapist knows there are a million ways he can get out of it. So we need to make sure all excuses are consigned to the bullshit pile, and that everyone - men and women - know there are no excuses.

Until people understand though, that rape isn't just 'sex that gets a bit out of hand', we're going to get nowhere. People are going to keep seeing rape on some kind of a sliding scale, as something that's obviously horrific if it happens to a virginal 12 year old, but if it happens to a sexually experienced 35 year old who had already had sex with the man in question, well, she must be culpable in part. Until we separate rape from consensual sex - two acts that could not be more removed from each other - we are going to keep falling into this trap of believing that an outfit, a drink or a smile are what causes a man to hold a woman down and force his penis into her vagina, anus or mouth. We have to be unwavering in our certainty that nothing gives anyone the right to do this, that no 'signal' can ever be construed as invite to force, that every person's body is inviolably theirs to control how they wish, and that anyone who commits this violation - whatever excuse they make - is woman-hating scum who should be met with the severest punishment imaginable.

The victory of the 15 woman over CICA today sends out a powerful message. But I wonder how much damage has been done by the earlier message CICA sent out, one it only retracted when its back was up against the legal wall. Is it good that debate has been stirred up, that judicial bodies have been forced to re-examine and apologise for their vile prejudices? Almost certainly. But for every right thinking person celebrating that sense has been seen, I'm sure there'll be a few others, male and female, who agree with CICA's original ruling. And that is precisely why there remains such an uphill struggle for women ever to be truly protected from sexual violence. At the moment, we can neither claim protection from it, nor justice for victims where it occurs. What a sad indictment of the modern world.