Due to my profession and domains of interest, 95% of people, with whom I communicate on regular basis in real life, are guys (believe or not). Many of them are smart and capable for empathy; and yet, some of these guys surprise me by blatant lack of understanding how women feel about sexual violence.
This ignorance is manifested in different ways; for example, I met:
guys, who mix rape jokes with reality;
Obviously, I'm not against black humor in general. I'm also glad to mock on rapists (sometimes cruelly enough) by myself. Yet, I have to note, that jokes, which are mocking their victims are mostly primitive and monothematic: humorous part is almost always about "surprising" discovering, that the rape victim wanted it herself. But, anyway, I don't take it serious if a guy made jokes about rape victims once or twice randomly. I understand that people may laugh on stupid things.
From the other side, if a guy makes them too regularly or, even worse, if they are made in the context of discussing real sexual crimes with a real people, THAT causes me some questions. In these cases I start to discuss the topic further and often discover in the process, that a guy really doesn't fully understand why rape is a serious deal for women IRL.
guys, who mix porn and role play with reality.
Knowledge of these guys about rape is fully based on kinky games with their girlfriends and/or on porn videos they look, while they don't fully realize the line between these make-believe games and real things. You can discover that in the process of discussing different things, connected with real sexual violence, with them. A couple of times, after digging deep enough, I caught a guy on attempt to apply a cliche from rape porn in a reasoning about real life events. I confirmed my guess by asking: "Where did you get that idea? Did you see that in porn?". After guy answered: "Well... ahem... actually... yes, I saw it once...", I told directly:
- These videos are just acting. Acting!
And a guy answered: "Yes, of course, I'm not idiot, I understand". But then, he told things, which clearly show that he just thinks that he understand, but actually doesn't...
So, when I faced that, I tried to use two main strategies in attempts to knock some sence in their heads: a) Analogues; b) Personal experience.
a) When I tried to base my explanations of why rape is traumatic, solely on analogues alone, it didn't impact anybody much. Probably, abstract speculations, which are not founded on something more concrete, don't have enough strength by themselves to break through the wall of people indifference. I even feel to lazy to list the list of analogues I used... you can find examples in the Internet in feminist's blogs.
b) When I want to base my explaining strategy on personal example, I abruptly make my voice serious and tell the following story:
Sexual violence event (short version)
It happened to myself 15 years ago, when I studied at college, where some guys harassed me. I found them very repulsive and tried to avoid them, but one day they caught me. It happened after lessons, at deserted backyard of the college. One of these guys pushed me against the wall and touched all my private parts under the clothes, while his friends held me, made mocking comments and laughed. I still remember burning powerless anger, extreme sense of helplessness and even more extreme sense of disgust. That disgust was the strongest disgust I ever felt. It felt approximately like being tied up and get bogged down into liquid stinky shit with thick squishy white maggots, which cover your body, crawl under your underwear and get in all your holes...
After understanding, that I can't break free by myself, I started to scream (despite of quickly followed punches and attempts to close my mouth with threats). I was very lucky that a teacher managed to hear it and came to backyard to see what's happening. Don't know how far it would escalate otherwise.
I told it like a matter of fact, without moralization, but instead implying the position: "I told you how it truly looks and feels in reality without hiding anything; now do whatever you want with this information". And when this story was told in that way, face-to-face, with abruptly serious, firm voice (in contrast to my casual voice, when I talk about casual things), nakedly explicitly with all disgusting details, looking directly in the eyes of listener, sometimes it managed to make an impact!
Yet, the impact on different people was different.
- When I told it to guys, who were my friends or had relationships with me, they were seemingly impressed and made very angry comments with toward these guys (some of them were almost furious and used a lot of obscene language). But more importantly, after it, I noticed shifts in their attitude toward rape-related topics (the shift was bigger or lesser, depending on the person, but not zero), to my great satisfaction (I didn't even hope to make such an impact, to say honestly).
- I also told it to one guy, with whom I didn't have relationships, just sex, in responce at his suspicious joke (?), which was something like "Why are you afraid of being raped? Knowing you, you'll like everything anyway" (don't remember his words exactly, it's their approximate meaning). I decided, that this was too much. So I answered sharply: "Oh, no, it's super-easy to do something, which I will not like" and told that story. Probably he didn't expect such serious answer to his trolling, so he became silent for awhile, and then told: "I'm sorry". I don't know if anything in his mind changed after it, because I didn't see him since then. But at least, he learned, how does it look like from my side. (sigh)
- When I told it to people, indifferent to me, they weren't impacted at all. Instead they answered with cliched absurd things like: "You provoke them" or "They just flirted with you". In responce, I asked "How is it even possible to provoke people by clearly trying to avoid them?" Or "How is it possible to not see a difference between friendly flirt and clearly violent actions?" these people just ignored it, rolled their eyes and told that I'm wet blanket, who takes everything too serious. These times I totally failed to convey my experience and felt like I tried to talk with the wall.
So... I can conclude that:
0) Direct pointing out that guy lives in imaginary world of porn and kinky games, doesn't work;
a) Analogues don't work (at least, in the way I used them);
b) Telling about personal experience works, but ONLY with people who feel empathy to me personally (and are capable of empathy in general). Especially if they see contrast between my positive attitude toward normal sex and disgust to clear rape.
Small note about the grey area
Of course, I'm totally aware that there is a big grey area between rape and consentual sex; yet, comparing things from the opposite sides of this spectrum (100% consentual sex and 100% rape), you can be more expressive by the biggest contrast.
I also want to say about ways of "explaining" harm of a rape, which I NEVER want to use:
c) Trying to forbid all rape jokes and all talks about it except condemning rapists. It's ridiculous. You can't just make shut up everyone who tells things you don't like. Not even mentioning my hate toward censorship in general.
d) Trying to directly moralizing or/and make hysterics. Nobody will take hysterical screams like "How can you say such a horrible things?! How dare you! Shame on you!", serious. People will just roll their eyes (understandable).
So... any thoughts, how else can I explain, that the water is wet, and the skies are blue, to guys around?
P.S. Some additional thoughts and notes bout unhealthy depiction of sexual violence topics in fiction
- First of all, I don't take blatant porn with rape seriously (despite of the fact that it can disturb me, if it's really cruel). As I told, I see much bigger problem in people, who can't draw a cler line between that acting and reality. I.e. in lack of critical thinking... and lack of thinking about serious things in general.
- I feel very irritated, when author of fiction writes about rape seemingly without having any idea what they're writing about. For example, when relationships, started by rape, eventually turn into happy aliance, full of hearts, sparkles and butterflies.
I can believe that highly unhealthy relationships between rapist and victim are possible under some specific circumstances: for example, if the victim's mental sphere is already mutilated by previous bad events and/or if she is currently in desperate position, or if events happen in society, where women are considered like a things, belonging to men, and thus can't choose the partner by themselves. Obviously, all these cases can't lead to anything but mutilating woman's emotional sphere further...
But love and hapiness? I see no way how relationships with rapist can they lead to this. Makes no sense to me.
Once more: I don't think that it should be forbidden or anything like that. I just wish people would become smarter and start to understand that it all is bullshit.
UPD: The purpose is not to explain rapists that they shouldn't rape.
Or how we say in Russia
It's to make normal guys feel why sexual violence scares women so strongly, and let them understand better what women feel because of these things. I want to make guys around me understand women's problems better in general and take them more seriously for a simple reason: just because I am a woman myself.
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Mar '20
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Mar '20
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