Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters (8 page)

Thankfully, the rates of sexual assault are dropping (thanks in part to legislation enacted by feminists), but the culture of rape we live in keeps on trucking. This is one of the reasons feminism is so important. This isn’t about random acts of violence. This is about young men being brought up to look at women as less than human. Seriously, dehumanization is what makes people able to commit violence against each other.

That California rape case? Thankfully, guilty verdicts were handed down eventually. But the damage done to the young woman was irrevocable; she was completely dehumanized by the rape and by the legal system. Check out her statement to the judge.

It’s easy to get angry; this is some horrible stuff. But we need to look past the anger and ask some tough questions. The young men who raped this woman were people she thought were her friends. They were teenagers. What kind of culture are we living in that breeds guys who think this is reasonable, even cool, behavior?

A term that’s used by a lot of feminists and other folks to describe this fucked-upness is “rape culture.” We live in a culture that essentially condones rape. Yeah, it’s illegal, but social and political conditions implicitly “allow for” rape. Like, how many men actually go to jail for rape? How many women are still blamed? Besides, you can’t tell me this isn’t a cultural problem when at least one in six women will be the
victim of an attempted or completed rape! Those aren’t small numbers—this is a huge problem, and it’s time we started treating it as such.

The problem is, too many “solutions” put the impetus for change on women—like safety measures. A woman in South Africa, for example, invented an anti-rape device for women in response to the high rates of sexual assault in her country. The device, which is kind of like a female condom (you have to wear it inside your vagina), will fold around the perpetrator’s penis and attach itself with microscopic hooks.
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It’s impossible to remove without medical help. Now, sounds like justice for a rapist asshole, I know. But the problem is this: It’s up to the woman to protect herself against a rapist. It’s
our
job to make sure that we don’t get raped, not men’s responsibility to make sure that they don’t attack women. (And, of course, the device is problematic because women can be raped orally and anally, and I’m guessing putting hooks in a guy’s dick will probably make him pretty violent.) Women across the United States will take self-defense classes or carry safety whistles. They’ll put pepper spray in their purses and walk fast through parking lots. All good things, I guess. But we can’t keep running away. We should be able to walk the streets—or stay at home, for that matter—without fearing violence.

Most people are familiar with the term domestic violence, but intimate partner violence (IPV) is a newer term. When people think of domestic violence, they generally think of a boyfriend and girlfriend or a husband and wife. But violence can happen in any kind of relationship. IPV broadens the definition. It’s physical or emotional abuse by a partner, wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, an ex, or a date.

IPV affects both men and women, but women are disproportionately the victims of violence in relationships. Women make up 85 percent of the victims of IPV, and one-third of American women report being physically or sexually assaulted by a partner (husband, boyfriend, whoever) at some point in their lives. Again, the numbers are even scarier for young women. One report says that 40 percent of teenage girls say they know someone their age who has been hit by a boyfriend. That’s just out of control.

And the truly scary thing about IPV is that it’s rarely an isolated incident. Violence in relationships tends to follow a pattern—a cycle of abuse. Sounds technical, I know. Most people think of domestic violence in kind of a stereotypical way—a guy slapping around his girlfriend when he’s had too much to drink, for example. But the truth is a lot more complicated than that.

The cycle starts with a “tension-building phase,” where—duh—tension builds between the couple. There could be emotional and verbal and physical abuse during this time. When the tension reaches a climax, there is an incident of physical abuse on a larger scale—the tension is so high at this point that anything can trigger it. After the incident, the batterer moves on to the “honeymoon” phase, where there are apologies, excuses—“I’ll change” and such (cough, bullshit, cough). Then the cycle begins again. And again. Often, the violent incidents will get worse over time.

There’s also a pattern when it comes to those who abuse their partners. There are definite warning signs. The weird thing? A lot of potentially abusive men initially come off as the “perfect” guy. They are immediately superromantic and want to spend all their time with you. But this is often the abusers’ setting the stage so they can take total control of the relationship by creating an atmosphere in which they’re the biggest thing in your life. Because then it’s harder to leave, of course.

Some signs of a potentially abusive partner:

Other signs/abusive actions include enforcing seriously traditional gender roles (in which men expect their female partners to do all the nurturing and taking care of their every need), verbally abusing their partner, using force during sex or being sexually manipulative, using cruelty to animals or kids as a means to control their partner’s behavior . . . the list goes on.

I guess my point is, there’s a lot more to violent relationships than individual incidents. Some abusers may never even leave a mark on their victims. A nurse once told me of a man who would force his wife to drink Tabasco sauce as a punishment. It’s about control and fear—and violence is just a means to the end.

Victim-blaming happens constantly when it comes to relationship violence, mostly because of one question: Why don’t they leave? The answer is that it’s really never that simple.
Here are some of the most common reasons victims stay in abusive relationships:

So again, not so simple. And I can’t emphasize this enough: We have to get beyond the idea that it’s
our
responsibility to not have violence done to us. We deserve to be safe in our relationships.

You
know
you have a favorite street-harassment story. (And yeah, I know there’s harassment at work and such; we’ll get into that in another chapter.)

The first time I saw a penis was when some random dude on a subway platform took his out and started running toward me with it. Charming, huh? Talk about a scarring experience. I just froze. Luckily, a train came into the station and he just got on like nothing had happened. Then there was the guy who told me my ass looked so good he wanted to eat his dinner off it. (You think that line ever worked?) Then, just recently, I walked past a young man in front of the New York City library and he leaned over and whispered, “I want to eat you” in my ear. I actually felt his breath on me—nasty.

I’m sure you have your stories, too. We all do. For some reason (ahem, rape culture), guys think that they have the right to say anything to you. Or grab your ass. It’s the assumption that you’re there solely for them. One essay, “The Little Rapes, Sexual Harassment” by authors Andrea Medea and Kathleen Thompson, makes the connection between street harassment and rape.
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They’re both intrusions into your personal space, your right to just
be
. Both harassment and rape are the results of a culture that teaches men that women exist solely for them, their desires.

Too often, issues of violence against women are presented in a pretty universal way. The white woman being beat by
her no-good, drunk husband. It’s got “movie of the week” written all over it. What’s shown less often in the media (or anywhere else, for that matter) is violence in the lives of women who aren’t white, middle-class, straight gals. Obviously these issues affect all women, regardless of their race, class, and sexual orientation—but some women are affected disproportionately.

For example, African American women are much less likely to report a rape. Native American women are most likely to be raped by a white offender. Sixty-one percent of female soldiers have said they have been sexually harassed in the army. Queer women are more likely to be attacked than straight women. Women on welfare are more likely to be victims of domestic violence.

Race, class, sexual orientation—or even the kind of job or career a woman has—influence how violence affects her.

It’s amazing to me how the United States can simultaneously have great and shitty laws concerning violence against women.

Probably the most important piece of legislation is the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). It gives billions of dollars to help survivors of rape, intimate partner violence, and stalking. What’s weird is that more people don’t know about it. It passed in 1994 and was reauthorized in 2000, 2005, and 2006. This latest reauthorization extended VAWA
for five more years and increased funding—VAWA now allocates $3.9 billion to related state and federal programs. Impressive, right? Unfortunately, there are folks who actually want it done away with. Bush has tried to cut VAWA funding substantially (shocker, I know), and other organizations that call themselves “men’s rights activists” speak out against the law, saying that it discriminates against men (not true—the law allows for funding for men as well). So while VAWA is doing great things, it’s still under attack.

There are other laws—mostly state laws—that seriously screw women over when it comes to violence. The gay marriage ban in Ohio, for example, is the perfect example of how all of our rights are interconnected. If one group is fucked, we’re all fucked. It’s actually getting abusers off the hook. Since the same-sex-marriage ban prohibits legal recognition of any relationship of “unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effect of marriage,” judges have been ruling that the state domestic violence law doesn’t apply to unmarried couples. Yeah. So women who are being beaten by their live-in boyfriends are basically being told that if they want to press domestic violence charges, they’ll have to marry their abuser. Sweet, huh?

Other politicians are trying to make it okay for Catholic hospitals to deny rape victims emergency contraception because it goes against their principles. Apparently, the principles of a woman who doesn’t want to get pregnant by her rapist don’t count.

In Tennessee, it’s not illegal for a man to rape his wife unless he “uses a weapon, causes her serious bodily injury, or they are separated or divorcing.” When spousal rape does qualify as a crime, it’s treated as a less serious crime than a rape of any other woman.

You see what I’m getting at. The fight is far from over.

Hearing all this stuff is really disheartening, I know. But just because culture at large isn’t doing all it can to combat violence against women, it doesn’t mean women aren’t. Women (and men) across the country work their asses off in organizations like the Family Violence Prevention Fund; the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network; INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence; and Legal Momentum. Not to mention the countless rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters out there.

And it’s not just women working in women’s organizations who are making a difference. Young women are getting seriously innovative in their free time.