...And other helpful advice on how to challenge Rape Culture

An Introduction by Iris A. Hodgson and Meaghan Kelly

Trigger Warning:

If you're a woman, chances are someone has tried to give you some advice about how to not get raped. This advice is so all-encompassing that it encroaches upon most of the choices that women make about their presentation ("Don't wear a short skirt"), whereabouts ("Don't go to that party"), friends ("Don't go to that part of town at night") time and money ("Take a self defence class"), social activities ("Don't drink too much"), and privacy ("Tell someone where you'll be").

This advice could come from friends, family members, professors, counsellors, people you barely know. The message is: watch yourself. The email forwards, the defence tips (carry a weapon! never trust anyone), the concerned tones from others when they learn that you dare to leave the house on your own after it gets dark... All of this advice has nothing to do with stopping rape as a phenomenon. It constructs an idea of rape as something that happens only on dimly-lit streets and with the 'wrong crowd.' It creates a stereotype about the kind of person that rape tends to happen to, and suggests that you not become 'that kind of girl.' The solution proposed is to carry your keys in the palm of your clenched fist because you're afraid to walk home from a friend's house at night, not to talk about why that fear exists and is tolerated- and certainly not to admit that rapes are committed more prominently by those in positions of trust than strangers in the night.

However, people choose to take this kind of advice regarding their clothing or social life not just because they don't want to be raped, but also because they don't want to be blamed for their rape.

The culture behind this type of advice stresses that it is women's responsibility to avoid being raped more than it is men's responsibility not to rape:

This culture is rape culture

Nixed Metaphors

Using rape to describe unfortunate or disappointing circumstances ("We totally got raped on the football field today") trivializes rape. Using rape to describe conquest or triumph ("I raped that exam!") is equally inappropriate and also creepy – in that scenario you are identifying yourself as a rapist. Metaphorically, it's true. But also casually, as if rape is not something serious that should stop immediately and that is never, ever funny. Rape jokes are not funny. End of story. I have said this on the street to men I don't know ("I'm not a sex offender, but my friend is!"), I have written this on too many Facebook status updates, and I have had to say this at too many parties.

Rape is something so bad that we made up a special word for it: rape. Do not use that special word for things that are not as bad as rape. I don't often cite the wisdom of Dane Cook, but I will now. Here's what he says: "I'm pretty sure if I talked to a woman who's been through that horrific situation and I said, 'What was it like, you know, being raped?' she's not gonna look at me and go, 'Have you ever played Halo?'"

Speaking of people who have been raped, remember that chances are good that you are in the presence of someone who has been raped. For the men reading this, which I hope you are, please know that one in five (but probably more) of your female friends has experienced it personally. When you say "raped", you might mean "we lost the game" but you also might be bringing back unwanted memories for someone who has experienced the real thing.

But back to the R-word: if you are talking about rape, say rape. Do not qualify rape in order to minimize it. Don't say, "sex", or even "forced sex" or "unwanted sex." Don't make distinctions like "date rape" or "grey rape." If someone has not expressly given consent, it's rape.

People who have survived rape are then told that they have misunderstood their own lived experiences. Even if they don't say so in so many words, saying something like "Well you shouldn't have been that drunk" or "But you went home with them" implies that what happened was something deserved, or something that was not rape, or both. Calling rape something else that is fuzzier and cuter is another way of denying the experiences of rape survivors. Rape is serious, needs to be taken seriously, and should be named when it occurs. Sex is consensual. Rape isn't.

The entire fashion industry is premised on the idea that a person's clothing discloses something about their character or their identity. Clothing is used by the people who wear it to signify all sorts of meanings. But let's be clear: there is no outfit that says "I want to have any variety of sex with any individual I encounter today and I promise it will be consensual." If a person genuinely wants to have sex with you, and tells you so, that's consensual sex. If a person is wearing a miniskirt, they are wearing a miniskirt. If someone is saying no, their clothes cannot say yes. Any discussion of a survivor's outfit that is meant to downplay rape is blaming the victim, full stop.

This idea seems straightforward, but it apparently is not. Many ladies out there who decide against the "You're asking for it" short skirt option might try wearing...what was it again...pants. Those must convey the correct "Don't rape me please" message. BUT NO! Juries in Australia and South Korea have ruled that rape cannot occur if a person was wearing skinny jeans. The jeans, they argue, are so tight that it would be impossible to remove them without the wearer's consent. This does not mean of course that skinny jeans are in some way magically rape-proof: it just means that if you get raped while wearing skinny jeans it's your own damn fault. Except in Italy, where a jury struck down the skinny jeans defence, saying, "Skinny jeans cannot be compared to any type of chastity belt." Duh.

Besides the obvious absurdity that one could not remove skinny jeans with any applied force (such as, you know, the force required to take off an article of clothing), this 'defence' does not take into account the complexities of consent. Taking off your pants does not infer consent to have sex. Consent means that any party has permission to end the sexual act before it goes farther. No party has permission to continue it after that point. Ever.

So, to recap, if you are wearing a skirt, you are asking for it, and if you are wearing pants, you are asking for it. Rape culture can be identified by the strong pressure to discount survivor's experiences by telling them they were asking for it. It does not matter particularly how the story is discounted as long as it is. Rape culture tries to make rape go away not by stopping it from happening but by denying that it did happen in the first place. After all, if clothes really do matter, why does no one ask what the rapist was wearing?

Schrödinger's Rapist

Schrödinger's Cat is a famous thought experiment about quantum physics. To put it crudely, if you stick a cat in a box with some radioactive matter, the cat might die but it might not. While the cat is still in the box, it is definitely dead or definitely not dead, but until you open the box, you can't tell which!

Schrödinger's Rapist is a thought experiment that comes from a post written by Phaedra Starling on the Shapely Prose blog. To summarize this brilliant and controversial post into a few sentences: Women know that there is an extremely high chance of their being sexually assaulted. Knowing this, they actively make choices on a day-to-day basis meant to keep them safe.

Enter the scientific variable: strangers. If you are a stranger, especially a stranger who is a man, you could be a rapist. Considering the extremely high chance of rape, there must be some rapists out there too. About 1 in 60 men is probably a conservative estimate.

The thing is, it's pretty hard to tell a person who will rape you from a person who won't rape you. You only find out that a person will rape you when they're, oh yeah, raping you, and you don't want that to happen. You can't know if the cat in the box is alive or dead until you open the box and at that point it's too late: if the cat is dead, there's no saving it. So if you are a stranger and especially if you are a man and you are approaching a lady, she is doing this calculation about whether she thinks you are a rapist.

Here is the thing to not do about this information: get defensive. Just don't do this. Even if you are a Good Dude ™, you are not entitled to having everyone believe this about you upfront, especially people you don't know well, especially people whose history you don't know.

If you are really a kind understanding person, understand that this threat is a real one. If you realize that a woman is uneasy or is setting up safety-protecting boundaries, don't act offended or try to explain that it isn't necessary to do that with you. Take these boundaries seriously and respect them. In fact, be proactive about not invading someone's space without their consent, respect their decision when they say no (to another drink, to a ride home, to a conversation, to a hug), don't get try to get them alone if they don't want to be alone with you. Earn trust and don't break it. That last part is important, because most women are raped by people they know. So statistically speaking, the better you know each other, the more likely you are to rape her. Awesome eh?

You can help to lower these stats and maybe the distrust by not raping anyone.

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