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Jul. 6th, 2006 08:48 pmOkay, that's it, I'll admit it-- I'm still mad over the whole Rescue Me thing. Or rather, not so much the show as some of the reactions I've seen. Because I've seen fans say that they think it was a rape, but that 'she deserved it' and 'she wanted it' and 'look what she's done to him; can't blame him' and that is what is pissing me off.
So I am now going to snarl for a few paragraphs and get this off my chest and then go through some more emails and hopefully find a better mood. . . .
It's not about behavior. Gavin de Becker says truthfully in his excellent book The Gift of Fear that it's impossible to turn a decent man into a violent rapist by irritating him.
It's not about looks. No Evil Stepmothers are going to shriek in rage because my face shows up in the mirror anytime soon, let's just say. ;-) But I've gotten my butt pinched in a grocery store. Can't even count the catcalls. On one memorable occassion, I had a guy standing outside the car I'd locked myself in, knocking on the windows, angrily slurring that he "only wanted to touch me a little".
I wasn't dressed 'provocatively' any of those times. For one of the catcalls I was dressed in jeans, wearing my husband's coat, and my hair was soaking wet. Oh baby. ::eyeroll:: You know what the factor was? They saw that I was female. I was prey, not predator. And they reacted to that.
At various times, I've been "the drunk girl at the party". The "girl in a deserted area with a guy she doesn't know". You know why I wasn't attacked? Because the men I was with at the time weren't rapists. The times that I was nearly attacked? I was playing a game of basketball with a friend at an elementary school playground; and I was sitting in the front room of a trailer while another friend talked to her boyfriend in the back room. Not high-risk situations, right? But the guys who were there. . .
My father generally makes the analogy that you don't douse yourself in steak sauce and then walk around near a lion's den, and you also don't put on a tight outfit and go walking around at night in a bad neighborhood. As much as I agree with him on other things, this always has been and always will be a point of contention (until the day I succeed in changing his mind) because men are not lions. They're human beings capable of making decisions. A woman can be drunk and/or passed out and thisclose to naked in a room full of men, and she will be just fine if the men in the room are decent. A woman can also be inside her home, wearing incredibly 'modest' clothes and completely sober, and still be attacked if a burglar breaks in and decides to take the opportunity.
That's what it is. Opportunity, and sometimes whether or not you fit some 'type'. The awful thing is that what you wear doesn't matter, your past history doesn't matter . . . until after the fact. The very things that the rapist took peripheral notice of in favor of whether or not he thought he could overpower you are the very things other people will focus on entirely and say, "tsk. Look at the length of that skirt. What was she thinking?"
And so it all comes back to the victim. Tell me, exactly what are we supposed to do to avoid 'asking for it'? 'Deserving it'? Skirts don't cut it; they're easy access. Jeans don't; too form-fitting. Shorts? Form-fitting and show off our legs. Loose blouses just make guys wonder what's underneath and I don't even need to get into what's wrong with tight or low-cut ones, right? Going to parties, especially ones where people will be drinking? Incredibly bad idea. Walking around alone? Just making yourself an easy target, you know, best to have company. Male company. Make sure it's someone you know very, very well, though, because if someone you trust attacks you, then that's going to be on you for trusting instead of on him for breaking that trust.
So, it looks like we're down to-- "Lock yourselves in your homes at all times and do not interact with any men. Ever."
This is the message society sends, with its constant refrains of, "Well, this is what she was wearing and what she did wrong and who she shouldn't have been around and where she shouldn't have been and she just provoked him anyway." Its ideas about how we all know men are basically wild animals that can never be trusted, so women should always be on guard and blamed when something goes wrong, because it's not like guys should be focused on, right? We all know that their behavior will never be changed, because they can't help it, the poor things.
And some people call feminists man-haters.
So I am now going to snarl for a few paragraphs and get this off my chest and then go through some more emails and hopefully find a better mood. . . .
It's not about behavior. Gavin de Becker says truthfully in his excellent book The Gift of Fear that it's impossible to turn a decent man into a violent rapist by irritating him.
It's not about looks. No Evil Stepmothers are going to shriek in rage because my face shows up in the mirror anytime soon, let's just say. ;-) But I've gotten my butt pinched in a grocery store. Can't even count the catcalls. On one memorable occassion, I had a guy standing outside the car I'd locked myself in, knocking on the windows, angrily slurring that he "only wanted to touch me a little".
I wasn't dressed 'provocatively' any of those times. For one of the catcalls I was dressed in jeans, wearing my husband's coat, and my hair was soaking wet. Oh baby. ::eyeroll:: You know what the factor was? They saw that I was female. I was prey, not predator. And they reacted to that.
At various times, I've been "the drunk girl at the party". The "girl in a deserted area with a guy she doesn't know". You know why I wasn't attacked? Because the men I was with at the time weren't rapists. The times that I was nearly attacked? I was playing a game of basketball with a friend at an elementary school playground; and I was sitting in the front room of a trailer while another friend talked to her boyfriend in the back room. Not high-risk situations, right? But the guys who were there. . .
My father generally makes the analogy that you don't douse yourself in steak sauce and then walk around near a lion's den, and you also don't put on a tight outfit and go walking around at night in a bad neighborhood. As much as I agree with him on other things, this always has been and always will be a point of contention (until the day I succeed in changing his mind) because men are not lions. They're human beings capable of making decisions. A woman can be drunk and/or passed out and thisclose to naked in a room full of men, and she will be just fine if the men in the room are decent. A woman can also be inside her home, wearing incredibly 'modest' clothes and completely sober, and still be attacked if a burglar breaks in and decides to take the opportunity.
That's what it is. Opportunity, and sometimes whether or not you fit some 'type'. The awful thing is that what you wear doesn't matter, your past history doesn't matter . . . until after the fact. The very things that the rapist took peripheral notice of in favor of whether or not he thought he could overpower you are the very things other people will focus on entirely and say, "tsk. Look at the length of that skirt. What was she thinking?"
And so it all comes back to the victim. Tell me, exactly what are we supposed to do to avoid 'asking for it'? 'Deserving it'? Skirts don't cut it; they're easy access. Jeans don't; too form-fitting. Shorts? Form-fitting and show off our legs. Loose blouses just make guys wonder what's underneath and I don't even need to get into what's wrong with tight or low-cut ones, right? Going to parties, especially ones where people will be drinking? Incredibly bad idea. Walking around alone? Just making yourself an easy target, you know, best to have company. Male company. Make sure it's someone you know very, very well, though, because if someone you trust attacks you, then that's going to be on you for trusting instead of on him for breaking that trust.
So, it looks like we're down to-- "Lock yourselves in your homes at all times and do not interact with any men. Ever."
This is the message society sends, with its constant refrains of, "Well, this is what she was wearing and what she did wrong and who she shouldn't have been around and where she shouldn't have been and she just provoked him anyway." Its ideas about how we all know men are basically wild animals that can never be trusted, so women should always be on guard and blamed when something goes wrong, because it's not like guys should be focused on, right? We all know that their behavior will never be changed, because they can't help it, the poor things.
And some people call feminists man-haters.
