Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters (7 page)

Basically, she’s saying that if girls are out socializing and having fun, they’re putting themselves in danger. By doing exactly what society tells us girls are supposed to do, we’re leaving ourselves open to being raped and murdered

The problem is, there are people who
will
use this as an excuse for violent behavior against women. I don’t think it’s coincidental that Joe Francis, the founder of
GGW,
has been accused of rape on numerous occasions (of the very girls who are going wild). But trying to pretend that if we somehow didn’t follow pop culture standards, all would be fine and dandy . . . bullshit.

The same society that puts forth these narrow views of women in pop culture also thinks we’re expendable, that we’re good only for one thing—men’s enjoyment.

So remember, this is definitely a screwed-if-you-do, screwed-if-you-don’t situation. You just remember to say, “Screw them.”

Violence against women is at epidemic levels in the United States. Sexual assault, intimate partner violence, harassment, and stalking are part of many women’s daily lives. Young women are particularly affected by violence—we are more likely to be assaulted and less likely to get help. Why are we not freaking out about this?

Violence against women is
so
common that it’s become a normal part of our lives. And it’s being committed by “normal” people. If you are raped, the guy’s not likely to be some random dude jumping out of the bushes. He will be your friend, a guy you know from school, a friend’s brother, someone at a party. That’s what scares me most about rapists—they’re otherwise regular guys, some of whom don’t understand that what they’ve done is wrong, others of
whom don’t care. Young men in the United States have been brought up to think that they have open access to women’s bodies and sexuality. Everything in American culture tells men that women are there for
them,
there for sex, constantly available. It breeds a society where rape is expected and practically okayed. So long as men are being brought up to think that violence and sexual assault are okay, this isn’t just women’s problem.

Yeah, I know, all of a sudden I’m not so jokey. This one hits home for me. I spent about a year (because that’s all I could take) volunteering as an emergency room advocate for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. If someone went to the emergency room after being assaulted—and this included women, men, and kids—I would go in and stay with them while they were in the hospital and try to make their time there as smooth as possible. It’s one thing to hear about rape statistics or to talk about domestic violence as some faraway, abstract thing. When it’s in your face—or in your life—the reality of violence is overwhelming. This is something that we can’t let devolve into another after-school-special issue that people talk about but don’t address head on.

Violence against women is one of those things that we kinda deal with all the time, but not in a substantive way. I mean, how many TV movies will you see (Lifetime addicts, I’m talking to you!) in which women are victims of rape or domestic violence? Shit, there are television shows dedicated to addressing the horror of sexual crimes—think
Law & Order SVU.
We have V-Day, a reinterpretation of
Valentine’s Day, when organizations bring attention to violence against women on Valentine’s Day. We’re taught about rape in school. Domestic violence
is
a well-known problem. It’s not like these are issues that people
don’t
know about. So you would think that we would be making leaps and bounds in dealing with violence against women. But it’s just the opposite. We’re so accustomed to seeing violence against women that it’s become normalized. We accept it as an inevitable fact of life, rather than an epidemic that we need to fight on a large scale. And that’s not okay.

When I was in college, a teacher once said that all women live by a “rape schedule.” I was baffled by the term, but as she went on to explain, I got really freaked out. Because I realized that I knew exactly what she was talking about. And you do too. Because of their constant fear of rape (conscious or not), women do things throughout the day to protect themselves. Whether it’s carrying our keys in our hands as we walk home, locking our car doors as soon as we get in, or not walking down certain streets, we take precautions. While taking precautions is certainly not a bad idea, the fact that certain things women do are so ingrained into our daily routines is truly disturbing. It’s essentially like living in a prison—all the time. We can’t assume that we’re safe anywhere: not on the streets, not in our homes. And we’re so used to feeling unsafe that we don’t even see that there’s something seriously fucked up about it.

Perhaps the most screwed-up thing about women living by a “rape schedule” is that it’s not all that effective. We assume that if we’re going to be attacked, it will be by some random crazy jumping from behind a tree. But, as I mentioned, that’s just not the case. According to a 2004 National Crime Victimization Survey, almost two-thirds of all rapes are committed by someone the victim knows: a relative, an acquaintance, a friend—even a lover.
¹
Perhaps you’ve heard this before, but I think it’s too important not to repeat. Because this is the statistic that shows just how “normal” rape is in the United States. It makes us feel better to think that we’re safe, that we’re okay if we protect ourselves from the boogeyman perv on the subway or in the bushes. Maybe it’s just too difficult to acknowledge that as it stands, we’re not safe anywhere. Yeah, I’m a downer. And I’m not done.

That same government study shows that every two and a half minutes, someone is sexually assaulted in the United States, and that one in six women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape. (Keep in mind, rape is one of the most underreported crimes, so that statistic is likely too
low.) For young women, the numbers are even worse. Eighty percent of rape victims are under thirty years old; 44 percent are under eighteen. Even worse, young women are much less likely to get help if they’ve been assaulted.

This is partly because some women don’t even realize that they’ve been raped. I know that sounds bizarre, but it’s true. We’ve bought in to the whole guys-deserving-access-to-women thing, too. Some women think that if force wasn’t used, it wasn’t rape. Some women think that they “deserved” it. Or that they “owed” a guy sex. ’Cause he bought her dinner or something. I shit you not.

So what
is
rape, anyway? Not to get all technical and educator-ish—because I’m well aware that plenty of women know all this—but it’s worth going over.

The legal definition differs from state to state, but the generally accepted definition is forced intercourse (vaginal, anal, or oral)—force being physical or psychological coercion. Men can be raped. Rape is not always heterosexual; women can rape women, men can rape men.

Sexual assault is different. It’s unwanted sexual contact, like grabbing, fondling, or other nasties. (I’m thinking of the douchebag on the subway when I was in high school who rubbed up against me. Shudder.)

I think the hardest thing to understand about rape and sexual assault is how—after we’ve supposedly come so far—it still happens and we’re so quick to excuse it. After years of legislation, awareness-raising, and activism, women are still being blamed for being the victims of violent crimes.

You would think that in this day and age, blaming the victim would be long gone. If only we were so lucky. Here are just a few of the common rape-blaming techniques. (They come in handy during rape trials.)

The outfit argument is one that never seems to get old. It’s been around forever, but it may be the most bizarre victim-blaming tactic of them all. Here’s the idea: If you’re wearing something that could be considered “slutty,” like (gasp!) a skirt, you were asking to be raped. Or you were teasing those poor guys who just can’t help themselves (they learned that in abstinence ed, remember?). This never made sense to me on so many levels, but I imagine that guys must find it pretty insulting. It basically means that they’re just big, dumb animals unable to control themselves within one hundred yards of a miniskirt. I don’t know about you, but I think we should give men some credit. Not to mention we should be able to wear whatever the fuck we want without fear of rape. Even more strange? Your outfit doesn’t even have to be revealing for you to be blamed for it. A supreme court in Italy actually overturned a rape conviction because the victim was wearing jeans. The argument was that she must have agreed to sex because her jeans couldn’t have been removed without her help.
²
Yeah.

Another fave blaming tactic is the “impaired” argument. So if you’re drunk or otherwise fucked up, you’re not to be trusted. Or you should have seen it coming. I remember seeing one of those anti-drug commercials a while back that was
supposed
to be about marij uana. It showed a house party where a youngish teen girl was smoking pot. It then showed her passing out on a couch and a creepy-looking guy coming to sit down next to her. He looks around and then starts to put his hand down her shirt. The screen fades out and you hear the girl say “no” in kind of a whisper. Here’s the kicker: After the screen fades out, the message says, “Marijuana lowers your inhibitions.” Huh? But
she
was the one smoking, so I guess
her
inhibitions were lowered enough to be passed out and assaulted? Yeah, victim-blaming at its government-funded best.

Another example: A writer for
The Wall Street Journal,
Naomi Schaefer Riley, wrote a piece on the rape and murder of New York college student Imette St. Guillen. Riley wrote that the student “was last seen in a bar, alone and drinking at 3 AM,” and that “a twenty-four-year-old woman should know better.”
³
I guess St. Guillen wasn’t aware of the woman-only curfew and alcohol prohibition. Do you really want to live in a world where someone is going to blame you for being raped (and murdered!) just for going to a bar and getting a drink? This isn’t to say that women shouldn’t be aware of how alcohol and drugs can affect them. Of course we should try to be as safe as possible. But the focus needs to be on the perpetrator—not women.

God help you if you’ve been raped and you’re not a virgin. Because apparently if you’ve slept with one guy, you want to sleep with them all. Remember our friend Bill Napoli on the only girl who should be able to get an abortion? The sodomized virgin? It’s kind of like that. An Italian court ruled in February 2006 that sexual abuse is less serious if the girl isn’t a virgin.
⁴
Seriously. Now, obviously your sexual history has
nothing
to do with sexual assault, but somehow it’s always brought up. A study in the United Kingdom showed that a third of people believe that a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she has been “flirtatious,” and one in five think she’s responsible if she’s had “many” sexual partners!
⁵
In a case in California where a teen girl’s gang rape was videotaped, the defense team called her “trash” and a slut who wanted to make a “porn” video.
⁶
Never mind that she was unconscious. Never mind that she was raped with a pool cue, a lit cigarette, a can, and a Snapple bottle. Never mind that during the attack, passed out, she urinated on herself. At the end of the first trial, the case was put on hold because of a hung jury.
⁷
Now tell me that the slut-baiting doesn’t work. If you don’t fit into the “good girl” standard—or if people can convince others that you don’t—you’re in real trouble. If you’re a stripper, prepare to be disbelieved. If you’re a prostitute, forget it.

This is the ultimate in victim-blaming: the all-encompassing “She should have known better.” Known better than to wear a skirt. Known better than to walk home alone. Known better than to be drinking. Known better than to be alone with a guy. The real danger of this whopper is that it plays on the guilt that rape victims feel—and that’s seriously fucked up. Not to mention, it pretty much ignores the rapist. It assumes that rape is inevitable, and that the onus should be on women to protect ourselves. What about the folks doing the raping? I guess they’re off the hook. Women (and men) have to know that there is nothing you can do that warrants being raped. Nothing. I don’t care if you’re a naked, drunk, passed-out prostitute. It doesn’t matter.