2013 Resolution: Ending Rape

There have been 2 very disturbing rape stories in the news lately.

1) A gang rape in India
2) The teenage girl in Steubenville

A Gang Rape in India

 This 23 year old woman - The. Same. Age. As. Me. - was gang-raped so severely that she ultimately died.

She had just finished watching a movie and was accompanied by a male friend... something I - and many of my friends - have done countless times, thinking we would be safe.

She, however, was not.

When getting onto a bus (still with her friend) she was gang-raped and beaten (her friend was also beaten) to "teach her a lesson" since her attackers felt she should not have been out with a man at night, even though it was only 9pm.

6 men raped and beat her for hours before dumping her and her friend, naked, on the side of the road.

Horrible.

And they are not the only victims.

• When I heard this story on CNN, they reported that in New Delhi alone, a woman is raped every 18 hours. EVERY 18 HOURS!?!
• Further, "official data show that rape cases have jumped almost 875% over the past 40 years -- from 2,487 in 1971 to 24,206 in 2011." (CNN)
• During protests begun by outraged Indian citizens calling for safety for Indian women since the original rape story, 2 other gang-rape victims have been found: a 10 year old girl who was raped, killed and dumped in a canal and another 14 year old girl who was raped by 4 men. (thestar.com)

This is absolutely disgusting.

Perhaps an even more disgusting story is the case in Steubenville:

The Teenage Girl in Steubenville

If you haven't heard of this case yet, you soon will because the online hacktivist group, Anonymous, has gotten involved making it viral.

Though this is alleged now, it was highly documented with teenagers' use of today's technology via twitter, instagram, etc. in what The New York Times called "a graphic, public diary."

Basically, 2 hometown hero football players paraded around a 16 year old girl to 3 different parties even though she was too drunk to resist or respond.... or even remember much of the evening. She was so drunk that she vomited several times and could not walk. They removed her clothes, touched between her legs, tried to get her to perform oral sex, took pictures and video of her and possibly urinated on her. Other students referenced "Rape Me" by Nirvana and described her as "dead" or "asleep" and other very awful things recorded in a video from someone's phone.

I think the most upsetting thing about this story is how no one interfered on her behalf!?! 

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

                                                                                         - Edmund Burke

Where were the good men (and women) when this evil was happening?

Oh, don't worry. They were just busy with social media tweeting, texting and instagraming this episode. WHAT???? Did social media suck away their souls, conscience and heart?

I have no idea how they could have not only stood by to watch this but also took time to document it.

Fortunately, technology can be used for good. As I mentioned, Anonymous has gotten involved and they are gathering evidence from the internet to put pressure on the town and the courts to take this case seriously, even if it does involve some of the town's favorite football players. Equally, a Steubenville blogger also has been using technology to try to seek justice in this case; you can follow her continuing coverage here.

How can teenage boys and men do this? What on earth gives them the notion that they have the right to a woman's body like that? To touch and violate and abuse?

How do we stop this??? 

I know this isn't a happy post but rape is not a happy thing. And though these few women have gotten a ton of coverage and support, there are countless more who have been violated but don't have this much coverage or support - and more still who don't have any because they never report their rape.

I struggled with how to end this post. I remembered an essay I read by Andrea Dworkin where she called for One Entire Day Without Rape. I wrote a post about it almost 2 years ago and she wrote the essay in the early '80s. However, rape continues.

Hopefully, for 2013 we in America and India and the whole world over can adopt her resolution for One Entire Day Without Rape. As a baby step at the very least, a beginning, to a world where 16 year old girls and 23 year old women and any woman will be safe.

More information on India: 1, 2, 3, 4.  And on Steubenville: 1, 2.

One Entire Day without Rape

What I would like to do is to scream: and in that scream I would have the screams of the raped, and the sobs of the battered; and even worse, in the center of that scream I would have the deafening sound of women's silence, that silence into which we are born because we are women and in which most of us die.

And if there would be a plea or a question or a human address in that scream, it would be this: why are you so slow? Why are you so slow to understand the simplest things; not the complicated ideological things. You understand those. The simple things. The cliches. Simply that women are human to precisely the degree and quality that you are.

And also: that we do not have time. We women. We don't have forever. Some of us don't have another week or another day to take time for you to discuss whatever it is that will enable you to go out into those streets and do something. We are very close to death. All women are. And we are very close to rape and we are very close to beating. And we are inside a system of humiliation from which there is no escape for us. We use statistics not to try to quantify the injuries, but to convince the world that those injuries even exist. Those statistics are not abstractions. It is easy to say, "Ah, the statistics, somebody writes them up one way and somebody writes them up another way." That's true. But I hear about the rapes one by one by one by one by one, which is also how they happen. Those statistics are not abstract to me. Every three minutes a woman is being raped. Every eighteen seconds a woman is being beaten. There is nothing abstract about it. It is happening right now as I am speaking.

                                               - Andrea Dworkin, quoted again at the end of this post

I recently feared rape myself. Not in the every day underlying fear but in a specific situation. And at that moment, I had another boxing match between the Southern Belle in me and the Feminist. Generally, both of those points of view blend beautifully but this past weekend, they each took a corner in the boxing ring, ready to battle it out.

I was planning to study with a male classmate for an upcoming test. We had established in class as well as via text message days before that we were going to meet in the library.

Less than an hour before we were to meet, he sent me a text asking if I'd rather meet him in a different building because "it was quiet and there was no one around."

Guys, I'm sure you would not even hesitate, oblivious to any reason for concern. Girls, the wheels of "What if" are probably already turning in your mind. Here's what mine sounded like:

Feminist: that seems odd... why the last minute change? The library is just across the street.

Southern Belle: oh, no need to make a mountain out of a molehill.

So, the Southern Belle in me texted back saying, "Sure, where should I meet you?"

He responded with "On the second floor, down a long hall."

The Feminist in me was like: "last minute location change + no one around + long, isolated hall = rape waiting to happen"

The Southern Belle's rebuttal was "Oh, don't be silly. I mean he seems nice right? I'm sure he wouldn't do that."

"Ha," the Feminist responds, "famous last words. I'm sure that is what every girl thinks right before she is raped."

The Southern Belle in me begins to agree, recalling my previous post on rape where I found that 83% of rapists are known to their victims and their attackers often include classmates.

Ultimately, however, the NERD in me won.

I needed to study so after allowing the Feminist to text a few friends a heads up on the situation and allowing the Southern Belle to send up a quick prayer, I met my study buddy down the long, dark hall and saw not a single other soul while I was in there.

Was this a dumb move? I like to think of myself as a pretty smart girl usually but this scenario left me perplexed and unsure if I was making a smart decision.

Was the Feminist in me over-reacting? I thought no since this is literally the kind of thing I have read about for the last 4 years of college!

I am happy to report that not a thing happened. As the Southern Belle assumed, this guy was totally nice and not a threat at all.

But, what if I had been wrong? Back to that previous blog post of mine, EVERY 7 MINUTES a woman is raped in America.

Guys, if you're still reading, do you understand why girls have this internal mental boxing match over something as simple as a study buddy session?

We. Are. Not. Over-Reacting.

Rape is a real threat.

Though I have not been raped, I have several friends who have been. I've heard their stories and their tears.

But it could be you or your sister or your mother or your girlfriend or your daughter or your grandmother.

Any. Woman.

1 in 4 women will be raped. 

But it can be stopped.

Andrea Dworkin gave a speech in which she simply asked for a


Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape. 

That was back in 1983.

She gave this gutsy speech to an audience full of men. I relate to so much of it and suggest you read the whole thing but here are some excerpts I really appreciate: 

As a feminist, I carry the rape of all the women I've talked to over the past ten years personally with me. As a woman, I carry my own rape with me. Do you remember pictures that you've seen of European cities during the plague, when there were wheelbarrows that would go along and people would just pick up corpses and throw them in? Well, that is what it is like knowing about rape. Piles and piles and piles of bodies that have whole lives and human names and human faces.

I speak for many feminists, not only myself, when I tell you that I am tired of what I know and sad beyond any words I have about what has already been done to women up to this point, now, up to 2:24 p.m. on this day, here in this place.

And I want one day of respite, one day off, one day in which no new bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old, and I am asking you to give it to me. And how could I ask you for less--it is so little. And how could you offer me less: it is so little. Even in wars, there are days of truce. Go and organize a truce. Stop your side for one day. I want a twenty-four-hour truce during which there is no rape.

And, 

men come to me or to other feminists and say: "What you're saying about men isn't true. It isn't true of me. I don't feel that way. I'm opposed to all of this."

And I say: don't tell me. Tell the pornographers. Tell the pimps. Tell the warmakers. Tell the rape apologists and the rape celebrationists and the pro-rape ideologues. Tell the novelists who think that rape is wonderful. Tell Larry Flynt. Tell Hugh Hefner. There's no point in telling me. I'm only a woman. There's nothing I can do about it. These men presume to speak for you. They are in the public arena saying that they represent you. If they don't, then you had better let them know...

It's not enough to find some traveling feminist on the road and go up to her and say: "Gee, I hate it."

Say it to your friends who are doing it. And there are streets out there on which you can say these things loud and dear, so as to affect the actual institutions that maintain these abuses. You don't like pornography? I wish I could believe it's true. I will believe it when I see you on the streets. I will believe it when I see an organized political opposition. I will believe it when pimps go out of business because there are no more male consumers.

And, I leave you with this: 

I dare you to try it. I demand that you try it. I don't mind begging you to try it. What else could you possibly be here to do? What else could this movement possibly mean? What else could matter so much?

And on that day, that day of truce, that day when not one woman is raped, we will begin the real practice of equality, because we can't begin it before that day. Before that day it means nothing because it is nothing: it is not real; it is not true. But on that day it becomes real. And then, instead of rape we will for the first time in our lives--both men and women--begin to experience freedom... For myself, I want to experience just one day of real freedom before I die. I leave you here to do that for me and for the women whom you say you love.

Rape: Just the Facts

• Over half a million women are raped each year in the US alone (this only includes those who report it)
• 1 in 4 women in the US are raped in their lifetimes (again, these are only the ones who report it)
• About 2/3 of rapes are thought to go unreported
• About 83% of rapes are committed by people the victim knows
• 1st being a former husband/boyfriend... someone with whom the victim was in love
• 2nd being someone the respondent knew well... friend, co-worker, classmate, etc.
• 3rd being an acquaintance
• 4th being a spouse
• 5th - with ONLY 4% - being a stranger
• Marital rape was not made illegal in all 50 states until July 1993!?!
• The first few thousand years of history, the only rapes punished were those that defiled virgins
• They were considered crimes against property (the property of their husband/father) and these men were reimbursed for property damages
• Every 7 minutes, a woman is raped in the US
• 10% of rape victims are men
• most are raped by other men
• most of them - perpetrator and victim - are HETEROsexual
• these rapes typically happen in prisons
• Women between the age of 16-24 are 2 to 3 times more likely to be raped than older women
• The "date rape" drug, Rohypnol, is 10 times stronger than Valium
• it has no taste, odor, or color and is, thus, almost impossible to detect
• it kicks in within 30 minutes and can last up to 8 hours
• it can often cause a blackout that can last up to 24 hours leaving the victims with no memory of what happened
• Victims often suffer after the rape with sexual, physical, emotional and mental problems
• some even develop PTSD

All of this information came from my Human Sexuality textbook, chapter 18 on Sexual Coercion... this was my much needed study break as I suffer through reviewing all 19 of its chapters for my last final on Monday!

Correcting Our Language... with help from Dane Cook

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." 


This is utterly untrue. 


So often we say things that carry so much negative meaning and we don't even realize it. 


Well Dane Cook did. 


Check out this clip from his Isolated Incident tour last year. 


That pretty much says it all. He uses humor but obviously when we say something is gay or "Sorry I just raped your Facebook wall" for commenting five times in two days, this is NOT funny to someone who is gay or has been raped.   


Take Dane Cook's advice and quit using someone's lifestyle as a derogative adjective and stop tossing around the word rape as though it is on the same level of severity as losing a video game. 


Put yourself in their shoes. Think before you speak.