Scotland's City Councils are Clearly in a Competition for 'Feminist Fail'.

Last week, it was Edinburgh; this week Glasgow's city council is behaving as if they had never met a feminist, let alone employed one! In a letter to the parents of children at a local secondary school, GCC stated that children's shouldn't wear short skirts or tight trousers as it might attract paedophiles. Yes, you read that correctly - it's children's clothing that makes the vulnerable to paedophiles. Does this sound familiar?

Well, fortunately, the Chief Exec at the Scottish Parent Teacher Council had the sense to point out that this was very unhelpful advice as it blamed children for the activities of paedophiles. And, even more interestingly, directly compared this to discussions of adult women's dress and their 'responsibility' for rape.

Time for the local councils to send their peeps on some rape awareness/ gender sensitivity training, me thinks.

WTF?

Edinburgh's Reclaim the Night Walk has been rescheduled by the council - get this - because it might be dangerous for the marchers!! The march, which is designed to reclaim the streets as safe spaces for women, will walk through an area full of pubs, during the Champions League football final, and the council is worried that the marchers will be in danger from drunken fans.

Instead of making the streets safe for the marchers, the council has asked the march to move their route and time. The organisers have rescheduled an hour earlier, but are refusing to change the route.

What would I have given to have been at that meeting! 'Er, we need you to defeat your own political aims and move the march, because, well, the streets aren't safe for women.' It would be be funny, if it wasn't so terrifyingly sad!

Announce-y-thingys

As part of 16 Days of Action for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Tomorrow Night is RECLAIM THE NIGHT GLASGOW 2009.

This year the route for the Reclaim the Night march in Glasgow will be from Botanic Gardens at 6.30 pm, down Byres Road - University Avenue - Gibson Street - Eldon Street and will end with a rally in the STUC, 333 Woodlands Road, Glasgow G3. As always, it will be led off by SheBoom and there will be hot drinks, food, stalls and music at the end of the march. If you need more information you can contact the Rape Crisis Centre at info@rapecrisiscentre-glasgow.co.uk.

This years theme for 16 Days of Action for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (25th November to 10th December) is ‘Commit – Act – Demand: we CAN end violence against women’. So it is perhaps both saddening and timely that the Daily Record reported that reported domestic violence rose by 8% this year to 53,861 incidents (in a country with a population of 5 million!) If you want to see what's happening internationally to combat violence against women over the next 16 days, please click here.

Now, I have to go finish writing the last chapter in my book, which just happens to be about domestic violence.

Dear Finnish Female Flatmate

Dear Finnish Female Flatmate,

Yesterday, I was on a train when a group of loud, male Londoners, discussed you. Your male flatmate confessed he had the hots for you, but didn't think you were interested. His louder and more agressive friend assured him that any girl who moves to London to live with three men was just 'looking for a good pole-ing' and he should 'go for it'. Said friend reiterated that Scandanavian girls (brief interlude while they discussed whether Finland was indeed Scandanavia, agreed it was, and continued) were all hot and up for it (unlike English girls), had less sexual hang-ups than 'stereotypically' [I think they were using this term wrongly] English girls, and that all you were looking for was a 'good pole-ing' [he did have a fondness for this term]. Your flatmate plaintively noted that you were here to study, but he was shot down by his mates, as your ethnicity and choice to live with a group of men apparently indicated your real desire was -yes again- to have a 'good pole-ing'.

Just thought you should be warned in case any poles come in your direction.

Best wishes,

Feminist Avatar.

Spot the Difference.

In Sept 2009, a mother has been given a minimum sentence of 33 years for the murder of her two daughters: 'Rekha Kumari-Baker, 41, stabbed 16-year-old Davina 37 times and 13-year-old Jasmine 29 times at their home in Stretham, Cambridgeshire'.

In January 2009, a father was given a minimum sentence of 21 years for the murder of his two sons: 'Ashok Kalyanjee, 46, who stabbed his two young sons- 6 years old Paul Ross and 2 years old Jay Ross to death, was sentenced to at least 21 years in jail.'

In Oct 2008, a father was given a minimum of 17 years for the murder of his two children: 'Robert Thomson, 50, stabbed his 25-year old daughter Michelle, and seven-year old Ryan, 26 times at their former family home in May.'

In Oct 2008, a father, James Howson, was given 22 years for murdering his 16 month old daughter by snapping her spine.

In 2001, a father, Darren Jenkinson, was given a minimum of 15 years for murdering his two infant sons, by smothering them.

Bad People doing Bad Things.

The recent death of Michael Jackson has raised a lot of discussion about how feminists should approach ‘bad’, by which I mean anti-feminist, violent, abusive, sexist, racist, disablist etc, etc, people. If Michael Jackson was a paedophile, does that mean we should never listen to his music (or, for example, Gary Glitter’s)? Does the fact that men, or women, in our lives sometimes abuse or hurt us mean that we should cut them out of our lives? Is there ever a place to forgive? And why is it that certain crimes are less forgivable than others? Why is it that a man who rapes becomes a rapist, but we are unlikely to think of someone who speeds while driving as a ‘speeder’?

In the medieval periods and really into the eighteenth-century in Western Europe, every person was considered capable of sin (or for that matter had the potential for sainthood) - in certain theologies, we were all born sinners. People at that time believed that some people were more likely to commit certain sins or behave certain ways than others due to social circumstance, and, indeed, there was a strong belief that our social place was set by God, but it was not innate. We were not ‘naturally’ evil or good, or even, for that matter, gay or straight, male or female (well, gender was a complex mix of biology and behaviour, but that’s straying from the point). It was our behaviour that ultimately came to define us, but, equally, if we changed our behaviour we became something else. So men that had sex with other men were understood to commit sodomy- they may even be referred to as sodomites- but they could stop behaving in that way and would no longer hold the label. Homosexual sex was an act that could be performed by anybody; it was not the innate identity of a particular group.

Then came the eighteenth century, ‘the rise of the individual’ and the sense that the self was an innate, unique being that, depending on your philosophy, was with you from birth, or was formed in childhood (so not entirely natural) and difficult to alter once fully formed. Freud followed a century or so after this, and he took this philosophy applied it to sex, and, hey presto, sexual urges are part of your psychological make-up and a reflection of your development in childhood (where ‘deviant’ sexual urges reflect an ‘immature’ mind). This of course had huge implications for homosexuality, which while still considered ‘deviant’, at least was no longer a choice. But, it was not just homosexuals that were created by Freud and his predecessors, but rapists and paedophiles. All forms of sexual activity fell under the same umbrella; whether you got your kicks shagging kids, or jumping out of bushes; or looking at a variety of inanimate objects, or respectfully and consensually engaging in sexual activity with a willing partner, your sexual choices were a result of your psychology and as such were part of what made you – you. And you couldn’t (or at least not without years of professional help) ever get away from that- if you were a rapist that is who you were.

Now a lot of these ideas are now disputed, not least due to feminist analyses of sex and violence, as well as the work of the gay liberation movement, but these ideas continue to have a profound impact on how we view sex crimes. Now, other crimes can be assigned a psychological motive (and thus are seen as the problem of the individual), but we also recognise that the same crimes can be committed by healthy individuals. Some murderers kill due to an innate need to do so; some are normal people in the wrong place at the wrong time, or who make a choice to kill – perhaps for a cause, like a soldier. But, in general, we do not see the soldier who returns from war as innately murderous. Similarly, while some thieves may steal due to psychological issues, most are driven by economic need or desire.

It is much easier to forgive someone who has committed an individual crime, but is not a ‘bad person’, than it is to forgive someone who is innately evil or dangerous. But, the problem is that nobody is entirely without a redeeming feature. Some paedophiles produce outstanding music; some wife beaters are great humanitarians; none of us our perfect. Sometimes the people who hurt us are our families who offer love and pain with the same hand; who perhaps cause us pain not because they are malicious or evil but because they are imperfect individuals in an imperfect world.

And sometimes, it is easy to figure out the right path. Don’t buy music with homophobic lyrics or endorse behaviour which is discriminatory. Don’t buy products that support people whose behaviour is despicable. But, it isn’t so easy to cut off your families and friends. And what happens to the family of the rapist, who have to live with the horror of his crime, without necessarily being the victim. How do they respond to him- do they forgive or cut him out of their lives? And at what point, if ever, does a person earn forgiveness? When he or she says sorry; when they stop behaving in a ‘sinful’ way? And, for how long are they held in purgatory? How long after the rapist commits the crime does he become cleansed of his sin and allowed back into society- when does his music move off the ‘banned’ list? Especially, because the victim of a crime doesn’t just magically ‘get over it’- they often suffer years, if not a lifetime, of trauma; they may have to seek counselling; they may have physical scars; or a crime may affect their life opportunities. The re-integration of the sinner into society makes the sinner visible with the potential to remind the victim of their trauma- which is even more pressing when they are a public figure.

And, yet, is redemption never possible? Are we always the sum of our mistakes? Because none of us are crime free. Most of us hope to be continually learning and growing. How do we move towards a better, fairer society, unless we are allowed to move past our sins?

Men- you can be raped too! Congratulations.

The Scottish parliament finally passed the new rape legislation that has been on the cards for a while. Previously, we had a very narrow definition of rape, which meant penis in vagina without the women's consent- but consent was never defined, and it has usually been taken to mean- did she say 'no'. The law has broadened so that rape can include penis into vaginas, anuses and mouths (so men can now be legally raped), while consent is now defined as free agreement where the party is not drunk, unconscious, asleep, threatened or coerced (and various other things). Consent can also be withdrawn at any point during the sex act. People need to show that they took steps to ensure consent to sex and describe what those steps were (in defence, if accused of rape). In effect, the idea should be to shift the burden, so the victim should not longer have to prove s/he said no, but rather that rapist needs to show that s/he said yes. It should no longer be a defence that s/he never said no or stop.

These are some great steps forward, although the initial discussions around the legislation wanted it to go further and it probably still should- for example, the definition of rape is still very narrow- only 'penises' get to penetrate. Rape with implements other than a penis still come under sexual assault. And the 'steps to ensure consent' is incredibly vague. What 'steps' are counted as valid? I kicked her and she grunted, I thought that meant yes? She wore a short skirt and flirted over a glass of wine. I thought that meant yes. She accepted a 'cup of coffee', I thought that meant yes. She was kissing me, I thought that meant yes. I guess the problem is that they have went to the effort to define what is not consent, or rather who cannot give consent, but do not define what consent should look or sound like.

It will be interesting to see the impact on convictions.

Who was she anyway?

This article from the BBC, which I have quoted in full, annoyed me. It discussed the murder of Kinga Legg by her boyfriend, but throughout the article, her boyfriend is discussed as a businessman, while she is his girlfriend. We learn about his businesses, his houses, where he lives, and his bankruptcy in 2006. In the last sentence, it is noted that she too is a successful businesswoman, and owns a tomato growing company with sites in the UK and Poland. But while he is the focus of the article, she is reduced to the bloody body in the bed. The effect is to make her ancillary to her murderer throughout, reducing her to his partner and a victim, rather than a human being.

Porsche recovered in murder hunt

Police in Cheshire have found a sports car thought to belong to a businessman whose girlfriend was found beaten to death in a Paris hotel room. Ian Griffin, 39, is at the centre of an international manhunt after Kinga Legg's body was found at the l'Hotel Bristol on Tuesday. Cheshire Police recovered a Porsche 911 they were looking for during searches of properties connected to Mr Griffin. Surrey Police have also been searching a property as part of the inquiry. Ms Legg, 36, from Poland, checked into the £1,000-a-night hotel on Monday. Mr Griffin arrived later.

Company owner

Her body was found by a hotel cleaner the following day. French police said she had died from "internal bleeding caused by multiple blows". Mr Griffin, originally from Warrington, previously lived in Knutsford and had several businesses listed in Cheshire. In 2006 he was declared bankrupt at Warrington County Court. Two plain-clothes officers from Cheshire Police had been standing outside his parents' home in Delph Lane, Winwick, on Friday. Ms Legg owned international company Vegex, which supplied Tesco and other supermarkets with tomatoes. The company has a site in Oxshott, Surrey and Opatówek, Poland.

The alternative, in case you were wondering, could be something like this:

Police in Cheshire have found a sports car in the murder investigation of businesswoman Kinga Legg, found beaten to death in a Paris hotel room. Legg's partner, Ian Griffin, 39, is at the centre of an international manhunt after her body was found at the l'Hotel Bristol on Tuesday. Cheshire Police recovered a Porsche 911 they were looking for during searches of properties connected to Mr Griffin. Surrey Police have also been searching a property as part of the inquiry. Ms Legg, 36, from Poland, checked into the £1,000-a-night hotel on Monday. Mr Griffin arrived later. Ms Legg's body was found by a hotel cleaner the following day. French police said she had died from "internal bleeding caused by multiple blows".

Kinga Legg owned international company Vegex, which supplied Tesco and other supermarkets with tomatoes. The company has a site in Oxshott, Surrey and Opatówek, Poland. Mr Griffin, originally from Warrington, previously lived in Knutsford and had several businesses listed in Cheshire. In 2006 he was declared bankrupt at Warrington County Court. Two plain-clothes officers from Cheshire Police had been standing outside his parents' home in Delph Lane, Winwick, on Friday.

It's not just the reordering of Ms Legg's person via that of her partner, but the use of her name throughout the article, instead of 'she', that makes her a central part of the text; a central part of the story- which after all is about her. To be honest, it would also be nice to get the words domestic violence in there and the 'found beaten to death' does disembody the crime from the murderer. But, equally, at this stage in the investigation it may be problematic to accuse a particular suspect of the crime.

Rape Stats.

There are numerous discussions over the webosphere at the moment about rape and rape statistics. In the more misogynistic areas, it is suggested that rape can never be proven and that our incredibly low conviction rape, of 5.7%, is all we can expect, as rape is always a he said-she said situation. (Let’s ignore that fact that this is true of most crimes where a victim reports a crime, and the defendant claims not to have done it). So I was quite interested to hear that rape convictions were as high as 33% in the 1970s. Being a historian, I wondered whether the 1970s were an anomaly, or whether it is our current situation that is odd. And handily I had article close by that detailed the rape cases tried at the Old Bailey between 1730 and 1830 (hardly the most enlightened age when it came to women’s rights, I might add). Now, it seems that over the hundred year period, we averaged a conviction rate of 17%, with the conviction rate reaching 38% in some years. More interesting perhaps was the attempted rape conviction rate (say that ten times fast), which averaged a 47% conviction rate across the period, with a high of 83% in the 1760s.*

Now there are good reasons why attempted rape was easier to prove than rape in this period. To prove rape, you needed evidence that a penis fully entered the vagina (and at certain points in history that ejaculation occurred). And as the death penalty was imposed for full rape, but not always for attempted rape, juries were always a bit queasier about finding guilt (seriously by the way- the death penalty was known to make juries cautious, especially for crimes they personally condoned or for situations they could imagine themselves in). But, it is interesting, once cases came down to attempted rape, which perhaps more closely followed the ‘he said, she said’ type situation (that are claimed to happen today- let’s ignore that most cases that are taken to court usually have additional evidence –both then and now), that the juries took the women’s side almost half the time!

So the question really is why we (juries) are so willing to give men the benefit of the doubt today, when we haven’t been so forgiving in the past?

*Antony Simpson, ‘Vulnerability and the age of female consent: legal innovation and its effect on prosecutions for rape in eighteenth-century London’, in G.S. Rousseau and Roy Porter, eds, Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment, (Manchester, Manchester U.P., 1987), pp. 181-205.

BBC Headline.

"Guard Jailed for Male Sex Attacks."

I think the word you are looking for is rape.

The Joys of a Bank Holiday Weekend.

This weekend, a bank-holiday in many parts of Scotland, saw the brutal murder of three children and one adult in two separate instances. In both cases, it appears that they were killed by their fathers. The murder of children by their parents is, of course, not unique, but, within the small population of Scotland, it is an unusual occurrence. For two sets of children to be murdered on the same weekend is even more shocking. The particular motivations for these murders have not, as yet, been uncovered. Both fathers subsequently appear to have attempted suicide and are in hospital. It is interesting that these crimes follow closely to a case in Austria where a woman, and subsequently her children, were held captive in a celler by their father for over twenty-years. In this case, the father is now being described as mentally ill. Now while this may be the case, what is important to recognise is that this sort of crime is a reflection of the nature of the society in which it is committed.

I would like to suggest that it is a culture that understands children as the property of their parents, and particularly, of their fathers, that underpins and explains these events. Whether it because of the behaviour of children, as punishment towards wives, or simply due to the mental disturbance of a deranged mind, that people, and particularly men, feel that they have the right to dispose of their children, or hold them captive, is indicative of their sense of ownership over them. You might argue in the case of mental illness that they are not making a rational choice, but even irrational choices are underpinned by cultural values. Why is it that these men did not murder other people’s children, random strangers or simply commit suicide? Why, even in insanity, did it appear to be a good idea to hold a woman captive? The sense of ownership, and thus disposability, of children is so central to understandings of fatherhood that it drives even disturbed behaviour. No doubt part of that drive is related to responsibility. The suicidal man, driven to take his own life, does not want to abandon his responsibility towards his children and so end their lives, in addition to his own.

Yet, while it is important that parents are responsible for their children, there needs to be a separation between the concept of responsibility and the concept of ownership. Children are not property. They are people with full human rights, whose only ‘fault’ is immaturity. We are responsible for providing them with safety, provision and education until they reach adulthood, but that responsibility does not give us ownership over them. Their immaturity does not remove their human rights. Until we change how we understand the relationship between children and parents, these sorts of crimes will remain a part of our society.

Blog Against Sexual Violence.

Today is blog against sexual violence day. It is part of ‘Sexual Assault Awareness Month’, which aims to highlight and condemn the place of sexual assault within society. The theme this year is sexual violence in the work place. I am not going to blog to theme, but instead address a related issue that has been highlighted in the blogosphere. So for Blog Against Sexual Violence, I give you:

Why Rape is Not Biology.

Ken over at Girlistic wrote a moving blog about the social consequences of rape and discussion in comments highlighted a common misconception: that rape is about biology. Rape is not about biology. The ‘need’ to reproduce is equally common, but not universal, amongst men and women. But it is not an over-whelming drive that overcomes rational thought or action. If it was, rape would be more common as single men and women everywhere tried to address their urges. In fact, there are societies where rape and the concept of rape are unknown, such as highlighted by the research of the anthropologist Christine Helliwell. If rape was biology, we would expect to find rape everywhere.

The idea of the sexually insatiable man is also a relatively recent invention. Early modern Europe understood women to be the insatiable sex who grew ill without regular intake of semen, while men could choose to abstain from sex with no noticeable harm or consequences. If rape was about biology, then men would always have been understood to be sexually insatiable.

Rape is not biology. Rape is an extreme manifestation of normal social behaviour. Within patriarchal societies, men believe they have the right to control women and especially women’s bodies. Power within patriarchal society is underpinned with the threat of violence. Legal systems enforce law through the threat of imprisonment; parents ensure obedience through the threat of spanking. Gender in patriarchal societies (at least in the West) is underpinned by biological sex and a belief that the male sex is strong and violent, while the female sex is vulnerable and weak. Sexual intercourse is underpinned by attitudes to gender so that sex becomes an act where the ‘strong, violent’ man enacts sex on the ‘passive, weak’ women. ‘Normal, consensual’ sex is symbolically understood as an act of man’s ownership and possession of woman. A woman's consent does not remove this discourse, it simply shows her acceptance of this dynamic. Rape, therefore, is not that hard to understand. When men rape women, their behaviour mirrors normal social values, but in a manner that is socially unacceptable.

Furthermore, it is this dynamic that makes rape so traumatic for the victims. The Fword has reported that a BNP candidate has blogged that rape cannot be that traumatic as women enjoy sex and compared rape to being forced to eat one’s favourite dessert. (Finallyfeminism101 has a great response to this scenario.) The threat of male violence is embedded into conceptions of gender. It does not have to be spoken or advertised because it is part of what it means to be a man. Similarly, women are understood to be passive and that passivity shapes their understanding of themselves. Women rely on men’s good will to not abuse them, as they are not allowed the agency to defend themselves. Violence becomes more socially significant and threatening for women as they cannot conceive of themselves as violent, but only relate violence to hurt and pain. The threat of violence looms larger in their minds than in those of men, who see it in themselves. Sexual violence is particularly traumatic as it is through the act of sex that women are most vulnerable, enacting their role as the passive receptacle to man’s active body. As it requires more vulnerability from women, it requires more trust, and the breaking of that trust is the more traumatic. In a non-patriarchal world, rape would still be distressing, like any physical assault, because there is a mental trauma response to physical pain to help ensure that a situation is not repeated. Furthermore, the removal of patriarchy would not eliminate a person’s sense of self and the desire for that self not to be violated. But, it would not be as traumatic because the social meaning of sex, which relies of on a gender system based on violence, would be removed. We are not there yet.

Rape is not biology. It is a reflection of our culture’s values and values can change. Long live the revolution.

The Follow-Up to Anti-Sex: Rape.

There has been some discussion recently about definitions of rape and whether it is possible for women to realise that they have been raped days or years after the actual event. In modern society, rape is often envisioned as a violent, physical act where a woman is forced, usually by a stranger, to have a penis inserted into a bodily orifice (most acceptably the vagina or anus, but at a push people might allow the mouth) against her will, despite her physical and vocal protests. This cultural narrative is so strong that people have even suggested that rape is practically impossible as long as the woman continues to struggle, which is often subtly reinforced by an expectation that women take ‘self-defence classes’. At a push, we will allow that some women, notably the very drunk, disabled, or unconscious, may not be able to physically fight off their attackers, but these women are so socially despised that rape is usually considered a worthy punishment for their vulnerability. Yet, there is little discussion of why this understanding of rape dominates the social imagination.

How we understand rape is informed by societies conception of sex. As detailed in my last post, contemporary understandings of sex are based on a model of gender that sees men as active and women as passive. This model sees violence as ingrained into the male psyche or body. Men are often seen as ‘protectors’ of women to justify the expectation that they can and will resort to violence, even if that violence is only approved of in particular circumstances. Violence became part of male ‘nature’. Women are meant to be passive under this model, and with passivity came vulnerability. This means that violent women are ‘unnatural’ and other women are in need of protection. As they were passive, women could not exercise agency or choice or consent. They were reduced to appendages of men, designed to reflect and embody male desire.

Closely related to violence is male sexuality. The act of sex was reduced to interaction between penises and vaginas, where penises were active and vaginas passive. Penises were violent and vaginas vulnerable (the penis is a sword, vagina a sheaf; penis is a weapon; vagina’s are cities to be scaled and sacked and won and marked on bed-heads as conquered). The act of sex was an act of domination and thus an act of violence. As women were passive receptacles, they had no sexuality of their own. The feminist movement has challenged this understanding of gender and has tried to give women choice and agency and the ability to consent. They have fought hard to have women recognised as active. Yet, while they have made gains, this cultural understanding of gender still influences how we understand the world.

Women who show active behaviours, such as displaying their sexuality through dress or behaviour, drinking too much (i.e. in a masculine way), being seen or walking in public, interacting with men as equals, remove their passivity and thus no longer need protection from men. Because they are no longer passive, they become active and equal to men. By being active and equal to men, they are placed in a state of war with men. (All men are in a state of war; the state regulates that state of war by offering securities and protections to encourage men to behave.) Yet, unlike men, active women are not entitled to protection by the state as they have broken with the social contract that demands that women are passive. Men rape active women to punish them for their activity and to remind them of what they are missing when they are under male protection. For women not to be raped, they need to learn to fight. And thus, we have the creation of the dominant narrative of rape.

The irony of this situation is that this cultural narrative does not reflect the reality of rape. Most women are raped by their friends, family and people they trust. Coercion is the cause of a huge number of rapes, so that most rapes do not look like the dominant narrative. The combination of these factors means that many women do not realise that they have been raped, because to most people rape involves a physical fight with a stranger. The conflict between how rape is envisioned in the public imagination and many women’s experiences is often blamed for low conviction rates and the concept of ‘gray rape’.

If we want higher conviction rates for rape, we need to change how we imagine gender. We need to remove the active/passive dichotomy. We need to destroy an understanding of gender that expects one half of the human race to be violent and the other to be always vulnerable. This is not an impossible dream. As I outlined in my last post, this understanding of gender is relatively new. We learned to behave this way. Now we need to unlearn it.

Anti-Sex?

There has been a lot of discussion on various blogs recently about the relationship between sex and feminism, and especially whether to be a feminist you need to be anti-porn. There seems to be considerable difficulty reconciling the place of sex in modern society. Foucault argued that sex became pathology in the nineteenth century, moving from a physical act that had little more social relevance than defecating to a defining part of our persons. As Twisty has recently very aptly put it:

Until you factor in patriarchy and its wacko concepts of property and gender, sex is just a thing, like eating a couple of Cheez-Its, or going to the movies.

More recently historians challenged Foucault’s timeline, arguing that sex had was a central part of people’s identities at various points in history for as far back as there is historical record. Yet, what most historians recognise is that what sex meant and how it related to people’s identities is very historically specific and there is no over-arching or ‘natural’ role for sex in people’s lives. At various points in history, women have been the sexually-aggressive sex; the chaste and pure sex; the frigid sex and the embodiment of sex. Men have not always sought after sex, but often rather reluctantly fulfilled the demands of their insatiable wives. They have also been the insatiable sex, whose ‘natural’ drives have been used to explain away a myriad of sins. The moral of the story is that sex takes its meaning from its social context, not the other way around.

In Western culture today, the place of sex and its relationship with identity is a product of eighteenth century enlightenment ideals, the discovery of the two-sex model of the body (where men and women are understood as different sexes rather than variations of a single sex), and Christian heritage. In the eighteenth century, there was a cultural shift where women moved from being sexually aggressive to passive and chaste, while men became associated with strength, power and virility. This was supported by natural philosophers, such as Thomas Hobbes, medical minds and the Church. During this shift, the act of sex was transformed into a symbol of male possession of women. Man’s ability to enact sex on women signified their social characteristics of power and authority, while women became little more than passive receptors of the male penis. Men became inherently brutal, while women became vulnerable. This understanding of sex and gender became naturalised in the nineteenth century as Darwin’s ‘natural selection’ idealised physical strength as the basis of power and Freud created theories of the psyche to explain why sex meant what it did.

In the late twentieth century, feminists, recognising that sex was the symbolic manifestation of male power and realising that there was absolutely nothing natural about this model of the body, attempted to challenge this through ‘liberating’ sex. They wanted to create a new model of sex that allowed women to break out of a mould that depicted them as passive receptors and glorified the ideal of male sexual virility. They understood that this understanding of sex was inherently problematic and stifling to women and men. Yet, while they managed to remove some of the restrictions on having sex, they failed to achieve a major reinterpretation of the body and gender that underpinned this model of sex. The result is that feminists today have conflicting legacies on the meaning of sex and this has led to a divide between anti-porn and pro-porn feminists. Yet, this division is inherently problematic. As Dr Crazy comments:

In part, I think my difficulty with the [sex-positive] label stems from the fact that it preserves a virgin/whore binary. Either one is anti-porn or one is sex-positive. How is that any different from being a prude or being a slut?

As long as we live in patriarchal culture, all sexual relationships, whether paid or unpaid, on or off-camera, consensual or otherwise, are given meaning by a world-view where sex is the symbolic manifestation of male power. Being pro or anti-porn does not make you a better feminist, because, as long as sex holds the connotations that it currently does, there is no feminist-friendly sex. (And that applies to the lesbian-separatists too, because, under patriarchy, all forms of sex are given meaning by their relationship with ‘normal’, hetero-sex).

The challenge to feminists is to change the meaning of sex. To change the meaning of sex, we need to change what it means to be male and female. The first step in that change is recognising that what it means to be male and female is historically and culturally specific and that sex and sexual urges are NOT natural.

Women Blaming 101.

Today, a man was found guilty of the murder of a woman. Not particularly surprising. Neither is the fact that despite this murder being carried out by a man, a woman was held to blame. In this case, it was not the victim, Krystal Hart, but the victim’s neighbour, Angie Brewer, with whom she had a long-standing feud. Angie Brewer had made a number of complaints against her neighbour to the council, many of which the police felt were nuisance complaints. The row between these neighbours had escalated to the point where they had CCTV cameras installed on the doorways and noted the number plates of vehicles parked outside the house. It was a bad situation.

A male friend of Angie Brewer, of whom the judge noted:

It is a sign of your warped mentality that you took the rantings of that demented woman seriously...and thought you would curry favour with her by carrying out those threats yourself,

killed Krystal Hart, in the hope that he would impress Angie Brewer.

Did Angie ask him to do this? No. Did the police find her in anyway criminally responsible? No. And yet, the prosecuting lawyer argued:

This defendant did what he did precisely because of the underlying animosity and him empathising with Angie Brewer. She will have a huge moral responsibility.

Why is Angie Brewer morally responsible for this? Did she ask him to murder her neighbour? No. Did she expect him to murder her neighbour? No. Did she arm him or suggest to him that this was a good idea? No. Did she report him to the police when he confessed to her? Yes. Now, I am not arguing that Angie Brewer was a good neighbour or against the fact that her complaints about her neighbours made their lives miserable. But, there is a fundamental difference between being a bad neighbour and murdering someone.

Why is it when a man murders a woman that a woman has to be held to blame? She is not responsible for this murder, morally or otherwise. A man killed Krystal Hart because he was obsessed with another woman. He killed her because in his sick mind that would ingratiate him to Angie Brewer. This is not Angie Brewer’s fault and to suggest otherwise is to blame a woman for the actions of man. This places women in an intolerable social position where they are not only responsible for their own behaviour, but those around them. Would we ask the same of man? Placing the responsibility of this murder on Angie is anti-woman and it is cruel. A man murdered Krystal Hart and he is morally and criminally responsible for her death.

But 'He Knew Her'.

Why is it that violence between people who know each other, especially when those people are of different genders or in a romantic or familial relationship, not as serious as violence between strangers? Cara at The Curvature, who I have to say has an uncanny knack of finding horrendous stories, highlights a case where an attendant in a halls of residence was not fired for raping a woman in his halls, because ‘he knew her’. On one level, I know that this is both an attack on women in the public sphere and an attempt to control women. Rape, of any sort outside of marriage or long-term relationship, usually comes down to a questioning of what the woman did to deserve it and, usually, this involves her having, at some point in her life, left her home. So to blame the victim and not the rapist is effectively a challenge on women’s right to be in public. Rape within in marriage or family environments, goes unchallenged as it questions male ownership of women and a man’s ‘right’ to control the women that he owns. Both of these techniques are a form of restricting women’s rights and spheres of operation, and of empowering men.

Yet, the ‘he knew her’ defence is more complicated than this. It implies that non-familial men have rights to women they don’t own. After-all, most men know quite a lot of women. It is not that hard. In the case Cara cites, the rapist lived in the same halls as his victim. Considering his position, he presumably ‘knew’ all or most of the women living there. Does that mean he could rape them all and have no consequences? Does his position of authority in the halls make it his own harem? This seems to be more complicated than an attack on women for being in the public sphere and more akin to a defence that argues that women he ‘knew’ were his property. Yet, traditionally when women were seen as property, they were owned by one man at a time, not many. Indeed, it used to be the case that if you raped a woman, your offence was a crime of property against her father or husband.

A ‘he knew her’ defence suggests that men have property in all the women that they know. But, if that is the case, multiple men own the same women. Furthermore, they have ownership without having responsibility. Under the traditional patriarchal family model, men owned women, but they also had responsibilities to provide for them, protect them and in many ways compensate them for the disadvantages of their bondage. Under the ‘he knew them’ model, men get all the privileges of ownership and none of the responsibilities or consequences.

In many ways, it is a defence that perfectly reflects modern patriarchal culture. Modern proponents want to have control over women’s bodies, whether that is to rape them or stop them from having abortions, but want to have no part in the consequences. The same people that call for restrictions on abortion do not also call for state funded childcare or free healthcare. The same people who advocate ‘he knew her’ as a defence for rape expect to walk away without consequences and leave women to shoulder the burden of the trauma. In many ways, this is death by a thousand cuts. Women’s power in society is reduced by the unbearable burden that they have to carry. It is the patriarchal system in operation in modern life; it is time it is removed.

Provoked Rape?

Police in Fife are looking for three men after they viciously raped a woman in a quarry. Detectives from Fife Constabulary said 'the assault was totally unprovoked'.

What is this ‘provoked rape’ of which you speak?

Some Thoughts on Sex, Degradation and Power.

Sage at Persephone’s Box recently posted about the place of degradation in people’s sex lives and beyond that in representations of sex in society. She argues that degradation (which she links with destruction and death) is a part of life that should be acknowledged. Now while I think that pain and death are part of life and even part of development, I was uncomfortable with thinking about degradation in this way. To be honest, I am not sure that I can articulate why, but there are some thoughts that occur to me as I read her post.

In her discussion, Sage comments that:

“So, when I think of that hideous rape scene from A Clockwork Orange, it hits me on a gut level of disgust and aversion, but it's also mesmerizing as my thighs begin to get warm.”

What struck me was that in a Clockwork Orange, especially in the book, the story is told from the perspective of Alex, the rapist, the perpetrator of violence. It is his feelings that we are experiencing as we watch/read, his arousal and pleasure that we are channeling. It seems to me that it is not the violence, per se, that is arousing, but the pleasure that comes from having such power. Almost all representations of violence are from the perspective of the active participant. Even in horror films, while the victim takes centre stage as they flee for their lives, inevitably in the wrong direction, when the violence begins, it is the perpetrator who takes centre stage. Films focus on the knife/saw/penis entering the body: in that instant the victim loses all agency and becomes passive and, with passivity, his or her humanity is removed. Once the victim is finally attacked or killed in a film, the tension and fear that the viewer is experiencing, caused by his or her relationship with the victim, is immediately released. That fear is replaced either with a pillow as the viewer hides his or her eyes, or with voyeuristic arousal caused by shifting your affiliation from the victim to the killer. You now share the killer's pleasure in his actions. In a sense, this has to be the case or horror films would stop being pleasurable and instead be grossly disturbing.

I think this also applies to rape fantasies. Of course, I cannot speak for all women, but it seems to me that rape fantasies focus on the actions of the rapist. It is his body, his over-powering strength, his penis, that forms the core of the fantasy, not our bodies’ reaction. We assume because the fantasy is happening in our head, or being viewed through our eyes, that our affiliation is with ourselves and our bodies. But is it? Does not our arousal arise from our awe, our fascination, with the actions of the man? When we think about our own bodies in that fantasy, does that fantasy change? If we become active in the rape fantasy, does the source of our pleasure change? If we fight back, does our pleasure not come from our empowerment, rather than the act of being raped? Can we ever take pleasure in the removal of our humanity? Can we even imagine this: being nothing; having no agency?

From a young age, women are trained (is it training or just self-preservation?) to deny the removal of their humanity that comes with being female. I was an avid reader of adventure fiction as a child. It never worried me that none of the active, leading characters were female. In my head, I was the main character whether they were male or female. The weak, female characters were not me, they were other women. Other women were different from me because I was fully human. This affected my relationship with other women as a young teenager because I knew that I wasn’t weak or stupid or girly like them. I was exceptional. Yet, at some point, I realised that other women thought that way too. I wasn’t exceptional; I was just the victim of a vicious lie that had told me other women weren’t human like me.

This lie was perpetrated in almost all forms of popular culture that I accessed as a child (what has changed!). Sage comments that

“Watching or thinking of portrayals of violence is a means to experience the intensity without anyone actually experiencing any pain in real life.”

Yet, popular culture caused me pain. It caused me pain when I woke up to the fact that my gender was not considered fully human. Rape scenes and scenes of violence against women allow us to feel for a few moments the pleasure that comes with having power over another human being; it’s arousing and even seductive. And it continues to perpetuate the idea that women are not human and that hurting them is pleasurable. Just because women can experience that pleasure, does not make it right.

I think this why I have a problem with degradation. Degradation is not (just?) about violence; it is about removing the humanity of the victim. It’s nice to feel powerful, hell, it’s even arousing, but is our arousal worth the loss of our humanity?