A few words about rape

Content warning:  This is about rape and the injustice of it, and stupid stupid rape culture that means many keep asking the wrong questions, and may be triggering for some readers. 

Most people seem to be having the wrong conversation about rape.  Too often the discussion ends up being about the person who was raped; what they wore, what they were drinking, their sexual history, where they were, their relationship to the person who raped them, so on and so forth.  As if my examining the minutiae of the lives of those who have been raped we can somehow find out how to stop rape.

It's the wrong end of the stick, and I know this will be 101 for many readers and bloggers here, but sadly it's still the only end of the stick for many in the media, figures of authority, radio hosts, and politicians. 

The problem does not lie with the people who get raped.  It never did, never has, never will.  You can examine them as much as you like, but you will never find a solution because you are asking the wrong question to the wrong people.

What we need to be talking about, again and again, is WHY PEOPLE RAPE.  Why do some people want to have sex with someone who isn't consenting?  What's going on in their head that that is ok and even desirable?  Is their decision-making impaired by alcohol or another substance?  Are they callous and narcissistic?  Do they actively want to have power over another to make up for some hole inside themselves?  Do they think that is how you show someone you love them, because that's what they've seen as a child? 

We must ask, and answer, these questions not to excuse the rapist, to minimise the rape, but to work out what the hell is going on that there are some people who think sex without consent is a good thing, something they need in their lives, or how we produced people who care so little about other human beings that consent is irrelevant to them. 

We can do this, we just need to decide, resource it and see it through.  There are a lot of NGOs and agencies doing incredibly valuable work at low levels, but it needs the omph of state support in my opinion.  Not likely currently, but absolutely essential to seriously tackle this really crucial issue that just gets put away in the One Day When We've Solved Everything Else file far too often.

Rape culture enables us to put it away, to forget about it, to put it back to the bottom of the pile time and again.  Rape culture allows us to Do Something about rape by actually doing very little at all.  Rape culture has to go. 

I'm keen to raise my kids to Not Rape.  But I don't have all the tools I need to do that because there isn't a focus on this side of the equation.  I'm teaching them to have agency over their bodies, to respect other people, to stop being so damn bossy (that one serves many purposes), and I hope I'm helping them to develop empathy.   I worry this isn't enough.  I do fear that my children might get raped one day, but ultimately that wouldn't be their fault, as terrible as it would be, and is thus largely out of their control, and mine as their parent.  What I can hopefully assist with is teaching them to respect others' bodies and choices, actively seek consent, and develop empathy for those around them.  That I can take some responsibility for. 

Rape is a horrible word, describing a hideous thing.  But we don't make it go away by not saying it, by not talking about how and why it happens and who does it.

It is rapists who are responsible for rape

Trigger warnings for rape, substance abuse and addiction, general enragingness.  Also excessive use of CAPS LOCK.


I heard a little bit about Lindsay Mitchell's latest Truth column on Twitter on Friday, but no one could provide me an online copy.  Today someone rectified that in comments here (thank you, kind of).


Now Lindsay and I disagree on many things.  We often have those agreements online, through the medium of blogging, but normally we manage to be remarkably civil for two people who disagree so fundamentally.


I really struggle though finding civil responses to this incredibly harmful rape apologist Truth column from Mitchell.  


1.  It is not necessary to put rapes in scare-quotes, especially when you are already using alleged in front anyway.  Quote marks are for quotes, and here are some examples:  Calling rape a "sex 'accident'" is so incredibly awful that it should be erased from the english language and never ever used again except to point out how awful it is.  Ditto for "retrospectively unwanted sex".  


2.  If a friend came to me and told me she'd been raped while she was drunk (or a male friend for that matter) then my first response would not be to have questions, but to offer support and love and whatever else they needed BECAUSE THEY ARE MY FRIEND.  


3.  The legal standard may be guilt beyond reasonable doubt, but when I'm not a judge or a jury member I am quite at liberty to make up my own mind to believe the person who was raped, which is what I intend to do, especially if they are my friend, but also as a point of principle to somehow slightly re-balance the constant disbelief that rape victims face at every turn.  Hurtful, harmful, unnecessary disbelief that Lindsay is perpetuating with this column.


4.  No one asks for rape.  It is rapists who are responsible for rape.  Being incapable of giving consent means you have NOT GIVEN CONSENT.  Sex without consent is rape.  It's really quite simply.  I thought former ACT candidate's were generally big on people having free will and giving informed consent and all that jazz?  


5.  "I’d talk it out and insist she mentally take some responsibility for what happened, learn from it and move on. And I’d forgive her, so she could do the same. "  This HORRIFIES ME.  If anyone has had that conversation with anyone I know who has been raped you better not ever tell me because I will explode with anger.  All over you in a hideous mess of brain matter and internal organ-ness.  I am not entirely sure I am exaggerating.


6.  Suggesting that the best response is to totally sweep any such incidents away from any examination whatsoever is just so irresponsible that I cannot believe Truth even published it.

I'm going to stop at 6 points.  I have to because otherwise I could write and delete and write and delete and write all night and still not be any further on with saying what I want to than just saying this:

It is rapists who are responsible for rape; minimising, excusing or denying this is unacceptable to me.

it's not how we're drinking, it's the drinking

with the alcohol reform bill being debated in parliament last week, and the law commission publishing its report earlier this year, i thought it might be a good time to talk about the drinking culture in nz.

i come to it from the perspective of someone who doesn't drink any alcohol at all. and someone who really doesn't like to be around people who have been drinking a lot. in fact, being near drunk people makes me feel really uncomfortable, mostly because of the lack of control & unpredictability of their behaviour. also, i hate the smell of beer & wine.

because of my own beliefs, i avoid going to pubs. i don't stay long at functions where i know significant amounts of alcohol will be consumed. and while i don't have a problem with doing this, it's not often realised that in our current culture, this can exclude me from a number of things.

i assert myself where i can. for example, at work they know that if they want me to be at any social function, then they better not hold it in a pub. i've had the "but you don't have to drink" line, which is about as useful as the "just take the ham out of the sandwich & eat it" line, but i've stuck to my principles on this one. i'm lucky enough to work in a place where they value my presence, so they work around this. often, we'll have dinner at a restaurant, then those who want to go to a pub will do so & i'll happily head off home, feeling that i've been able to participate on my own terms & also feeling valued as a person.

i've also been very firm with the NGO's where i volunteer. one in particular was in the habit of holding the AGM in a pub, to which i said "that's fine, but if you hold it in a pub, i won't be there". again, i've been lucky enough that they value my presence enough to hold AGMs elsewhere. but i was surprised to be thanked by two other board members who were also uncomfortable with going to a pub but didn't feel able to say anything about it.

and i can imagine that it might be the same with people who have drinking problems that they are trying to work their way through. i'm sure these people would find it equally uncomfortable, as would people of other faiths & some people of no particular faith.

which is not to say that i've never compromised. i did do the back benches thing, mostly because i thought the positives outweighed the negative - it was more important to get a message across than to fuss about the setting. but things like the "drinking liberally" meetings feel quite exclusionary to me, as do any number of occasions where people suggest going to the pub for something & i'm not in a position to assert myself, or i'm not in a crowd who would care even if i chose to assert myself.

i know there will be many people who'll say "suck it up, this our culture & you're in our country so you'll just have to adjust". to which i say "this is my country & i have as much right to determine what our culture will be & how it will develop as you do". but more than that, we know we have a problem with the drinking culture, we know the social & economic harm that is being caused by excess alcohol consumption. the reason we have strong (but often misguided) advertising campaigns in an attempt to change that culture is because we know it's destructive.

so i'm just throwing another factor in the mix. that factor being that when you organise your social or business events around drinking & alcohol, you are going to exclude some people. and it's not just us "touchy, fussy" muslim people, but many other types of people as well. a lot of these people won't be able to speak out against it, because the peer pressure is very strong & they find it hard to fight against. i find it easier because most people already think i'm weird or very different anyway, and i've gone past caring what other people think.