I'm Not Really Here

We refuse to cede the narrative: Rape Culture and Social Media

carnivaloftherandom:

Some of you are going to read this and snort. Some of you are going to read this and fist-pump. Some of you are going to read this and think, “I… never knew what that meant.” 

I’m putting a large TRIGGER WARNING FOR DISCUSSION OF RAPE, RAPE CULTURE, SUICIDAL IDEATION, and TRAUMA here, because I don’t know what may trigger people and I’m not easily triggered. 

Eight and a half years ago, I was midway through one of the worst years of my life. The year I could not speak, outside of minimal functioning to do my job (so I wouldn’t lose my home, be unable to feed myself and my mom, end up institutionalized, or dead. Dead was a very real possibility.) 

Eight and a half years ago, I didn’t have access to the internet on a regular basis. I had a library with internet access and that was it. When I first started using social media, it was 2005. I had moved on to the loudly shouting from rooftops and refusing to be silenced stage of my trauma recovery. I was a slam poet, and everybody was on Myspace. Then I joined facebook. Then came twitter and tumblr, and… 

It’s 2012, and we have politicians insisting on debating the definition of, “Real,” or, “Legitimate,” rape. In public. Unapologetically. These are the same people who refuse to pass an International Violence Against Women Act, btw. It is rape culture writ large. On social media sites, we refuse to cede the narrative to them. 

We blog. We connect. We hold each other up and shout and scream and we are not going away. Yes, it’s mostly women. I want men to feel safe joining us because the social stigma associated with being a male rape survivor regardless of whether the perp was male or female, is even more intense. Rape culture is designed as an escape clause for men, but it protects female perps even more insidiously. 

While the standard line is, “She was asking for it,” if you’re a female, cis/het survivor, for a male survivor, it’s “You couldn’t fight them off?” There are ALL kinds of jokes that will be made if you’re a male survivor and the perp was male but it’s worse if the perp was female. The implication that you should be overjoyed at getting enthusiastic pussy is not subtle. (I’ve spoken to male survivors, and if you need evidence: google news reports on every female teacher arrested for statutory rape in the last ten years. Be prepared to be sick.) 

We don’t talk about these things in mainstream media. We don’t pick the threads apart in order to stitch ourselves back up, we just darn over the tear in our cultural narrative. It is a narrative that is specifically designed to protect men, upstanding white men, who happen to be rapists. Predator Theory, is an excellent explanation of two very important studies on rape. Go read it. 

In social media, we are getting louder as we refuse to cede the narrative. Why? Because we know that we have our own truths, and we are not the only ones. The more of us there are, the more of us that are shouting about our rights to our own bodies, our agency, our rights to be both sexual and safe, and the fact that in our society we are not granted the rights to be either makes it a lot harder to ignore us. 

We’re coming out of that bleak, dark closet that the culture would like to keep us in. We’re naming names and violating gag orders , we are Slutwalks and we are finally finding ways to break through the insulation surrounding well-intentioned and  enlightened men by asking THE QUESTION, because as we are more aware and less tolerant of the creepers among us the more we have to find ways to stand up and break the uneasy truce society has with us. 

You don’t want to hear it. We get that. It is upsetting. It is disturbing. It says that men you know, or who are like men you know, are rapists. It says that you could just as easily be a victim of sexual violence, even if you follow all the rules you’ve been fed since birth. 

It hurts to take off the rose-tinted glasses, because the truth is blinding. 

One in three women globally (the numbers, with minor fluctuations hold true from one country to the next) will experience sexual or intimate partner violence in her lifetime. One in three. The numbers for men tend to vary wildly, because cultural taboos on reporting are actually worse for them. It’s not an insignificant number, no matter which data you look at. It’s just less than for women. Sexual violence against transwomen and transmen is largely ignored even in statistics, but that may be changing, slowly. 

The point is this: we are refusing to cede the narrative to predators any longer. Social media is making it entirely possible to break down the walls of silence and isolation that serve rape culture. It is lightning-fast and it is loud. 

Eight and a half years ago, I was struggling not to stop breathing. It was every day, all day, of trying not to scream because once I started I couldn’t stop. It was being dead inside and having no words for it, because there is no context for the pain and shame until you’ve lived through it. 

Four years ago twitter gave me back my voice entire, the last pieces of recontextualizing who I am as a person. A whole person, however patched and mended, superglued and epoxy-ed together, I am a whole person. I am stupid and silly, nerdy and dorky,flirty and fabulous, serious and sometimes traumatized. 

A little over a year ago, I sat in a ballroom at the San Diego Convention center and listened to Dr. Andrea Lentimendi (@arkhamasylumdoc) speak about Superheroes and Trauma. At the end, feeling slightly wrung-out (having a lot of Post-Trauma recovery under one’s belt doesn’t preclude feeling it, which is kind of the point of recovery) I asked the question: What about the women?

I’ll point you to Drea’s blog and say that it is the single best example I’ve seen in translating the clinical to the anecdotal, re: trauma. It is culturally significant that we are seeing trauma explored in comics, from a female point of view. It says that in a larger sense, we are not ceding the narrative any longer. People are being asked to identify with a woman as a trauma survivor. It matters. Gail Simone is someone I have deep admiration for, because she doesn’t cut corners in telling a story and she treats characters as people. To write trauma from a point of view that is non-traditional in the comics medium is a bold choice that gives me hope for the growth of empathy and understanding. 

Why? Because if any men reading this blog think about it, and probably without thinking about it too hard, they’ll recognize some of those things in women they know. Even if they don’t know the story behind it. The flinches, the facades that drop into place in certain situations, the way a woman who is normally the most take-charge, confident person they know becomes small and quiet. 

We refuse to cede the narrative. With social media and even with a narrative boost from mediums we least expect it from, we can change the narrative. We can find our voices, shed our shame, and engage in discussion that reshapes the idea of what being a survivor means. 

We are survivors, we are allies, we are men who accept that they will never know what it means to have a thread of intrinsic fear of sexual violence and who reject the idea that the, “Bro code,” means not calling out friends for being predators. 

We are women who have turned the message we are given by society inside-out and stopped accepting the blame for what somebody else chose to do to us. 

It is often uncomfortable. If you’ve read this far, I’m sure you’ve squirmed at least once. Good. We should all squirm at the narrative that’s been tattooed on our psyches because it’s false. It protects predators and punishes their victims. Keep squirming. Do something that’s even more uncomfortable: speak out. 

I joke about it, ” You can’t scare me, I’ve been gang-raped.” It’s both true and a lie. 

I get scared, more than I used to. I also know that I’ve survived the single worst night of my life, (the only thing they could have done that was worse, would have been to murder me. And, really: I wouldn’t have had to pick up the pieces after, so ymmv on that,) and anything else that scares me pales in comparison. Does my blunt announcement of my survivor status make people who know me uncomfortable? Probably. Most of them don’t say that, but I’m pretty sure it does. 

People don’t know what to say, because one minute you’re a normal person they know and the next, you’re a victim. The narrative creates cognitive dissonance. You can’t be normal and a survivor. It’s not done. The narrative of rape culture means that you must forever be in widow’s weeds for your lost innocence. You can’t be sexual, you can’t flirt. You can’t laugh. The narrative of rape culture decrees that if you’ve really been raped, you must be forever crippled by it and yet never speak of it. 

We refuse to cede the narrative to rape culture. We’re telling our stories. We’re naming names. We are not allowing the perpetrators of crimes and the culture that protects them and punishes survivors to determine what our lives are. 

Social media is changing everything, including this. Yes, there is a dark side to it. There are trolls and really frightening, hateful people. There is a staggering amount of misogyny and the rhetoric is often terrifying. Anita Sarkeesian is a prime example, pop culture still uses rape as character development as we’ve just seen with the developers of Tomb Raider. We’re getting better, but it is not an overnight process. Perhaps the signal advantage of social media is that it’s instant evidence of bad behavior, an it’s evidence that goes viral. A tweet, a wall post, a tumblr post: all can be screen-capped and preserved. It’s harder to silence real-time communication, to protect abusers. We can instantly get help and resources when we need it, in a 24/7 world there is always someone awake and listening. 

In the last week, I’ve seen men and women raising holy hell about Rep. Todd Akin’s “Scientific” proclamations on, “Legitimate,” rape. (If you want to see one of the most comprehensive standards for behavior, look at Washington, D.C., and have some myths debunked while you’re at it, here. ) It’s encouraging, because while Akin may have been talking about rape and pregnancy from a standpoint of trying to turn even more uteri into public property and removing even the exemption of rape that exists within most anti-choice legislation, people parsed that out very quickly and were able to reject both premises he put forward. Seeing people rejecting the idea of bodies as sexual or gestational objects is a step forward. 

We take those steps by refusing to cede the narrative, so to all of the men and women who are blogging, tweeting, tumblr’ing and otherwise standing up and shouting: Thank you. 

It gives me hope. For all of us. 

Important.

Good luck out there, today.

An Open Letter From A Survivor: To Crystal Dynamics/Square Enix, Re: Tomb Raider and Rape Culture

carnivaloftherandom:

In the past 24 hours, I’ve seen a woman tell other women to get over it, I’ve had a man tell me to carry on with my, “Crusade,” and I have been sitting on my instincts. 

Forums, comment sections of blog posts and articles: right now, they are a very ugly place. 

For anyone who is unaware of the situation, please go read themarysue.com’s article. 

Dear Crystal Dynamics/Square Enix, Gamers, and especially Ron Rosenberg: 

You understand absolutely nothing, about what being a survivor of rape, attempted rape, or sexual violence of any kind, means. You have gone beyond disrespecting women, and are disrespecting men as well. What you are further doing, is ensuring that every gamer who is a survivor, and every person who is in the thick of pop culture who is a survivor, cannot escape having their experience diminished to the level of a rape-as-drama trope. 

Again. 

(TW: While I have previously discussed my assault in blunt language, I am going to speak in detail right now.) 

Read More

[content note: rape culture]

unknownbinaries:

For those who think I rant about the patriarchy and misogyny too much

From: Julia Maddera, Georgetown University ‘13.  

To the first man, who I met by the Eiffel Tower my second week in Paris, when I didn’t know better.  Who took me out four times, who waved little red flags that I tried to ignore.  Like asking me outright if I was a virgin on the first date, like calling me five different pet names when I’d asked him not to throughout the second, like saying he’d heard that feminists were not real women during the third, like disappearing for a week and a half after the fourth.  Who, as it turns out, was not the bullet, but the careening fourteen-wheeler that I narrowly managed to dodge.  Who admitted that he hit the young woman that his mother was trying to force him to marry.  Who didn’t want to marry her because he believes in romantic love.  Who doesn’t see the contradiction in those two sentences.

To the guy in my medieval literature class, who lent me one of Camus’ plays and showed me around the library.  Who wants to use his French education not to escape to the West, but to go back to his third-world home country to teach at its eight-year-old university.  Who I admired until he asked me what my American boyfriend had thought about me coming to Paris, until he demanded to know why I didn’t have one (a boyfriend, that is), until he asked if it was required that I marry an American.  Who reached out and touched my earrings, without asking, the next time he saw me.  Who won’t take a hint. 

To the PhD student who tried to take me up to his apartment after a five minute conversation, when I had just wanted to get lunch, who said there’s a first time for everything.  Who told me that we were university students, living in a 21st century democracy, and that relations between men and women were different now, so what was I so scared of?  Who recoiled in shock when I told him that I had friends who’d been raped, and by other university students, at that.  Who does not have to think about rape on a daily basis.  Who insisted on paying for my lunch, because “it was a matter of honor.”  Who then physically prevented me from handing my money to the cashier, when I was trying to make it clear that this was not a date.  Who didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t want a boyfriend, five times.  Whose number I blocked the moment I stepped on the metro.  Who has called me three times since.  Who told me he wants to go into Senegalese politics.  Who, I can only hope, will listen to the women of his country better than he listened to me.

To the delivery guy on the red motorcycle idling outside of the apartments on Avenue de Porte de Vanves, the ones I walk past every day, who said bonsoir and who, because I said it in return to be polite, followed me to the metro as I walked, head twisted down, pretending that I didn’t understand the language I’ve studied for eight years.

To the two men Thursday night in le Marais, swaggering drunk toward me, ignoring the male friend standing by my side, who leered at my chest and slurred, “Bonsoir, comme tu es mignonne,” as I shoved past them, trying to sound angry, not afraid.  Who left me feeling fidgety and panicked, so when I took the night bus in the wrong direction and found myself alone with two other strange men at a bus stop at 2:30 A.M., I let the cab driver fleece me out of 25 euro just to take a taxi home.

To the group of teenage boys loitering on the corner by my apartment, who decided to sound a siren at my approach because I was wearing a knee-length dress and a bulky sweater.  Who made me regret forgoing tights because I had wanted to feel the spring air on my calves for once.  Who will never have to wear an itchy pair of pantyhose in their entire lives.  To whom I said nothing, because I still have to walk past that corner twice a day for the next three-and-a-half months, because there were five of them and one of me. 

To the three men standing on the corner of the periphery five minutes later when I was crossing the street.  To the one who motioned for his friends to turn and look at me, quick, and then left his wolf-whistle ringing in my ears, shame like sunburn covering my face.  Who didn’t care that it was broad daylight.  Who made me wish that I could swear a blue streak back in French, without my accent betraying that I am American, which is another word for “easy” here.

To the two men at sunset on the bridge by Saint Michel, in the middle of tourist central, who made skeeting noises at me, like a pair of sputtering mosquitoes, to get my attention.  Who laughed when I flipped them off, and who kept hissing at me anyway.  Who forced me to keep checking over my shoulder, all the way to the metro, to make sure that I wasn’t being followed.

But also to the French friend who blamed my problems with French men on my university in the northern suburbs, a Parisian synonym for emeutes, gang violence, and immigration.  Who insisted that if he brought me to his upper-crust private (white) university—where the French elite reproduces itself into perpetuity—I would meet nicer French guys.  Who forced me to defend the men who’d harassed me against his barely-veiled, racist critique.

And also to the American friend at home who nearly rolled his eyes as he half-listened to my stories, who said, “Oh god, it’s hard being so attractive, isn’t it?” as if I was being vain.  Who laughs and does not understand why I always duck out of the frame of photographs, who knows nothing of what my body means to me. 

And that’s just two months in Paris. 

To all the Italian men who made me wish I had dyed my hair black before studying in Florence, who kept me from going out dancing because I got sick of feeling them creeping up behind me, sneaking their hands around my waist (and lower) when I’d already said NO three times.

To the six-foot-something Georgetown student who prided himself on protecting the girls from being groped on the dance floor.  Who chose to write about the rape of the Sabine woman for that week’s assignment.  Who described the way her breast slipped free of her tunic when she fell, as if he was writing a porno, not a rape scene, who had the woman fall in love with her Roman rapist the next morning, after he spun her a tale of the coming glory of his country. Who said “in a fit of passion, she thrust herself upon his member” and was not joking.  Who ended the story with the titular character saying to her children that she had been raped, but only at first.

To the seventh-grade boy who told my younger sister that he could rape her, if he wanted to.

To the gang of twenty-five year-olds in the Jeep who hollered at her as they drove past, leering at her thirteen-year-old body dressed in sweat pants and a tank top.  Who made my sister, fearless on the soccer field and in the classroom and in the karate studio, run home crying. Who were the reason she became afraid to walk the dog by herself in our “safe, suburban” neighborhood.

To my father, who said, “What white male privilege?”  Who was not being ironic.

#listening to women means listening to the parts where they tell you things you don’t like

Jesus. Read the whole thing

(via teratocybernetics)