Dehumanizing
Warning: This post contains description and discussion of rape and its aftermath, including victim-blaming.
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While you’re being raped, you don’t get to feel like a person. Your personality, your history, your passions, your mannerisms, your interests, your pleasure, your protests: everything about you gets shoved to one side so your rapist can get to a hole.*
The violence is eloquent: you’re meat. People get to decline sex, so you must be something else. You realize through the fear and the horror that in that moment you’re nothing more than a flesh frame for negative space.
And hopefully one day that feeling goes entirely away.
When people say that rape is dehumanizing, that’s usually what they mean. To rape is to perpetrate an inhuman act that denies a person human dignity. But that only scratches the surface of what it’s like to survive a rape.
After you’ve been raped, you don’t get to be treated like a person. Your experience, your story, your anger, your grief: they’re all messy and unpleasant for everyone to deal with. Won’t you please put them away?
You’re going to be a statistic now. You’re going to be a cautionary tale. If you speak out or press charges, you get to be “the accuser”, whom people will likely suggest is trying to ruin your poor rapist’s life. Above all, you’re going to be a case to study and analyze so everyone can explain to each other why you were victimized. Because that’s more important than anything else.
See, if people can somehow figure out a way to blame you for being attacked, they feel safer. If rape is a crime of two wrongs, it can be prevented by scrupulously making rights.
You? You were asking for it. Or unprepared to defend yourself, or maybe your lifestyle put you in danger’s way. Or whatever. Something like this just wouldn’t happen to everyone else, or everyone else’s loved ones. It happened to you for a reason. Had to. Otherwise things get uncomfortable!
Apparently this time-honored system of rape aftermath management holds rock solid even when the person who was raped is an eleven-year-old little girl.
A little girl can be gang raped by at least 18 men and boys, and people will point out that she dressed provocatively to look older than her age. They will comb her Facebook account trying to prove that she engaged in transgressive behavior. The men who raped this little girl can take video of the rape and share it at school and on the internet, and some fucked-up woman will have the gall to comment, “These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives”. I want to believe that she’s referring to the soul-rot and gut-burrowing guilt that should encroach after committing such a vile act, but I don’t. I believe she’s referring to their reputations and the legal fallout. I believe she genuinely feels more compassion for the rapists than the eleven-year-old girl they brutalized. And I feel sick about the human race.
The New York Times and other news outlets repeated this victim-blaming bullshit without comment. NBC news invited someone to come on a TV program to say that this child was a willing participant in her rape. The way this story has been treated isn’t atypical, it’s only more dramatic because how can you blame an eleven-year-old for getting raped ARE YOU INSANE??
When people say that rape is dehumanizing, do they realize how much we as a society help it stay that way? Can anyone truly be surprised when rape survivors choose to remain silent?
We couldn’t protect and care for a little girl. We couldn’t work together to keep her safe. We couldn’t create a world where those young men would be sickened at the mere thought of hurting her. That would’ve been too much to ask, certainly. But why in the goddamn can’t we admit that she did nothing wrong, and they did?
Are we fucking animals?
*The mechanics of rape do not always work this way. I want to be very clear about the fact that I’m drawing from my personal experiences to express a feeling I believe may be communal, or close to. I’m not saying that my specific experiences are universal. Not all rape involves penetration. However, I believe it always involves some level of being involuntarily reduced to a body.
The rape victim is never at fault. Period. All stop.
Yes, there are things we can do to make ourselves less likely to be victimized, but it can still happen even if we do everything right. And it doesn’t make the victim at fault even if they did make some poor choices.
There is so much fear surrounding rape that people who haven’t been victimized have to put it in a box so they can feel safe. It couldn’t happen to me because I wouldn’t put myself in that situation. You know, because even the girl snatched while pumping gas could’ve been more aware of her surroundings. It’s all bullshit they feed themselves so they can sleep at night. They blame the victim to protect their own psyche.
In many ways, I believe rape is worse than murder. They kill you, but you have to go on living while part of you is dead. And then some sicko has the gall to feel sorry for the rapists. As far as I’m concerned, the rapist should be stripped down and bound with barbed wire and left in the desert for the vultures. The slow death should give them plenty of time to beg forgiveness and make peace with eternity. Instead our system offers them dignity and mercy while shaming the victim.
I want everyone to read this. I want you to get a medal for saying it in such a concise and straight forward way. I’m so sickened at the victim blame culture that is commonplace everywhere, it needs to be stopped. Thank you for writing this.
please put this behind a trigger warning
@j. Warning posted. Thank you for letting me know.
This is perfect. Thank you.
I remember my Grandma saying about a girl in a miniskirt “She’s looking for trouble and she’s going to find it!” I thought she can’t wear what she wants? I was just a kid but that struck me as wrong thinking. It’s too bad that attitude persists.
If you want to look for a bright side, the “she was asking for it” bullshit is going to ensure that everyone involved is going away. MAYBE you could pull that if she were an adult, but it’s a strict liability crime with an 11 year old, dumb-asses. So saying “she was a willing participant” amounts to an admission of guilt, on national TV.
Have fun in prison.
After you’ve been raped, you don’t get to be treated like a person. Your experience, your story, your anger, your grief: they’re all messy and unpleasant for everyone to deal with. Won’t you please put them away?
You’re going to be a statistic now. You’re going to be a cautionary tale. If you speak out or press charges, you get to be “the accuser”, whom people will likely suggest is trying to ruin your poor rapist’s life. Above all, you’re going to be a case to study and analyze so everyone can explain to each other why you were victimized. Because that’s more important than anything else.
I would very much like to be a part of the solution, and not part of the problem. But I was raised in this culture too. Is it acceptable for me to admit my own ignorance and ask for a guide on how to behave, as opposed to simply how not to behave? (Not being sarcastic with the “is it acceptable”, either, I’ve seen people commenting other places that those outside the know shouldn’t even ask those in the know how to behave because that, too, is unacceptable and abusive and dehumanizing.)
I hope this comment and query is not also offensive.
@perlhaqr I’m not offended by your question; I believe it’s coming from a sincere place.
Because sexual assaults happen to individuals, it’s much easier for people to point out the things that universally aren’t supportive. Sometimes what’s acceptable to one survivor isn’t to another, and for very valid reasons. I’m going to try to give this some thought, and perhaps write a post on it.
That being said, your question might not be well received on feminist sites generally because it could possibly be interpreted as “it’s your job to teach me”, which is a fairly common derailment tactic. Just a heads up. But I’m not taking it that way in this case, and it’s a question I’d like to answer if I can figure out a useful, non-harmful way to do so.
Yeah, I’ve seen that response to this sort of query before. “It’s not my job to teach you!”
It seems somewhat counterproductive. Ok, it’s not your job to teach me, but it’s clearly not the sort of thing that one picks up by osmosis in this society either. On the other hand, I guess I can (unfortunately) imagine how apologists could use it as a “well, you stupid bitches never told me I wasn’t supposed to get her ripped and then fuck her!” bludgeon too.
That’s not where I’m at. This is a pure “I’m concerned my ignorance could lead to me causing more harm to someone who is already not doing very well” plea. And, more disclosure, I’m working on becoming an EMT right now, so, the probability of my interacting with people who have recently been raped is going to increase dramatically. It’s very important to me to manage “first, do no harm”, on the psychological level as well as the physical one.
And I know some of the very basics, I suppose. “Don’t imply, or for fuck’s sake, come out and say that she ‘deserved’ it or it happened ‘because’ of something she did.” I’m more worried about, well, inadvertently traumatizing some poor eleven year old because I say some stupid thing after she’s been gang raped by 18 adults. Or, vastly more likely, traumatize an acquaintance of mine who was “date raped” in college, or last week, and is feeling ambiguous due to societal pressures, because hey, it was only “date rape” and not (to Whoopi things) “rape rape”.
(I also grasp even at this stage that “date rape” and “rape rape” are the same thing. The “rape” is the important part, not the context in which it occurred.)
So, I guess I need the 102 course. ;)
Thanks for hearing the sincerity of my request.
@perlhaqr
It’s actually quite noble of you to seek the knowledge. I take it to mean that you care.
I’m a long way from having all the answers, but obviously you don’t want to imply that she did anything at all to deserve it. Beyond that, don’t treat her as though she is broken. She isn’t. She is not anything less than she was before it happened. She survived something terrible. We don’t mark victims of arson or robbery for the rest of their lives. We don’t even label assault and battery victims as though they are broken. As far as how to deal with a friend or acquaintance, let them take the lead. Pay attention to their signals. Be there. Or go away if that’s what they want. But be available. And don’t tell them that it will be alright. They are likely to snap back that nothing about it is ‘alright’. The reason there is no advanced course is because each person is an individual. There is no right answer. Just be sensitive and let them know that you are trying.
And I’m sure the 101 course covered the absolutely no rape jokes.