Damocles said:bobmcfc said:An article in the NewStatesman
Ched Evans is a convicted rapist. He’s also a professional football player with a life to lead following his release from prison, due this coming October. Perhaps it’s not surprising that there have been reports that he’ll be re-joining his old club Sheffield United. After all, he’ll have done his time and you can’t give a rapist – even one who still does not admit to his crime – a life sentence, can you? Whatever my own view on Evans, I want to believe in rehabilitation for any human being who still has a space to occupy in this world.
And yet something sticks in the craw. Where is Evans’ shattered reputation, his ruined life, his permanent ostracism? It’s not that I want these things – what good would they do? – but since they’re part of the standard media narrative, I can’t help feeling that we’re owed them. Otherwise what was all the talk of a career in ruins ever meant to achieve?
We’re constantly told that men’s lives are destroyed by rape accusations, whether they lead to convictions or not. While I’m sure dealing with a rape accusation is enormously traumatic, I do start to wonder what this play-off is meant to achieve. Isn’t it time we asked what the “ruined life” narrative is actually doing? Whom does it help and whom does it harm?
A disproportionate focus on the way men’s lives are affected by rape accusations has an important role to play in rape culture. It reverses the power dynamics, positioning accusers as aggressors. Suddenly it is no longer the alleged crime, but its reporting that is the act of violence. It increases the pressure on victims who might already feel intimidated, asking “are you sure you want to make such a fuss? Are you aware of the damage you’ll do? Haven’t you got enough shame to deal with already?” It’s another form of victim blaming and it’s another way in which victims are seen as less than human, faceless objects in relation to which potential perpetrators have the right to define themselves again and again.
Put simply, a man’s good name – whether he deserves it or not – is ranked higher than a woman’s right to claim ownership of her body. In all the stories about how mud sticks very little is said about the long-term psychological effects of rape itself. Rape is seen purely as an event; a bad thing that happens, something that “we” all abhor. Yet I find it strange that so little thought is given to the inner lives of rape victims in the years that follow, not least given that we have so much time to pity the poor accused. We know that most rapes are not reported, and that most reported rapes do not result in convictions. What does that feel like, coping with that lack of closure, year on year? How does it feel to know that the person who did this to you is free? How does one deal with the lack of trust and the sense of having been utterly devalued? It is horrendous yet for some reason, this does not cause widespread outrage. As the recent twitter hashtag #ididntreport has shown, women who did not report their rapes are hurt, angry and they have not forgotten. Yet somehow these don’t count as lives ruined, presumably because they’re considered lesser lives to begin with.
Following the Steubenville rape convictions CNN reported on how “two young men with promising futures” had “literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart.” The path of these men’s lives is visible; that of their victim is not. She was an event and is now an inconvenience. The matter of how she moves forward is not worthy of consideration; since the life she leads will be that of a woman, perhaps we don’t really believe she moves at all.
This form of erasure, whereby the victim ceases to be a person and becomes a mere plot device in the rapist’s downfall, is heightened when victims of assault are marginalised in other ways and/or subject to other external narratives. In Mapping The Margins, Kimberlé Crenshaw describes how during the Mike Tyson rape trial “racial solidarity was continually raised as a rallying point on behalf of Tyson, but never on behalf of Desiree Washington, Tyson’s black accuser”.
The fact that Black men have often been falsely accused of raping white women underlies the anti-racist defence of black men accused of rape even when the accuser herself is a black woman.
Washington is repeatedly dehumanised: by the rape, by her race, by being a woman and by lacking the back story that rape victims are so rarely awarded unless, of course, it is the story of why they themselves are to blame. But rape victims need better stories than this. These stories have the power to change realities.
When I first went to college in the 1990s the right-wing press seemed convinced that an “epidemic” of so-called date rape accusations was sweeping UK universities, causing untold grief to hapless red-blooded male students. I remember sitting in the common room, flicking through endless tales of poor young men dealing with capricious accusations made by young women who’d later got drunk, or been seen dancing, or had had “slut of the year” pinned to their hall of residence doors. I understood instantly what the media emphasis on these stories meant: know your place, girls. Don’t complain or we will demonise you. You have no right to feel safe and no right to complain if your safety is violated. It’s a form of intimidation, albeit one that pales in comparison to that endured by Tyson and Evans’s victims following their attacker’s convictions.
Katie Russell of Rape Crisis England and Wales worries about the impact Evans’s release will have on other rape survivors asking for help. She notes that the upsurge in survivors coming forward in the aftermath of the Jimmy Saville revelations was followed by an almost immediate backlash, with talk of gold-diggers and witch hunts. As a nation we are, she says, not ready to accept the true extent and magnitude of sexual violence so we focus on the humanity of the perpetrator, not the reality of the victim. A key element in changing this would be more responsible reporting by the media, with particular care taken not to suggest a “not guilty” verdict means an accuser has lied. Even so, this is a bare minimum. Evans’s victim was believed by the court but has still faced trial by twitter and public exposure. The impact this has had on her life is hard to imagine, but it’s no excuse for choosing not to try.
Come October Evans may take to the pitch with thousands cheering him on but there’s someone who deserves support far more than him. Her life matters and she deserves the chance to heal, knowing that she is believed. We can’t put a full stop on Ched Evans’ life nor should we try to, but the woman he raped has a future as well. Even if we can’t know all that she’s up against we should all be rooting for her.
I can't recall the last time I read such a huge amount of drivel. What a bunch of wank.
Here's another pile of drivel for you
Sexual assault and why it's not me who should feel shame
Last weekend, my best friend and I met for brunch at a little ‘pop up’ place in Bristol where there’s a café and a bar and a shared portakabin of toilets grouped together. It’s a lovely spot, and a real example of Bristol creative entrepreneurship. I spent a great deal of time there last summer, as really this bar is best enjoyed under the hot, hot sun.
My friend and I were talking and she said she needed to go to the loo. I told her then that when I was here last year, this guy followed me to the toilets and tried to kiss me. Confused and angry, I pushed him away and told him he was in the wrong toilets. He laughed, and shrugged, and went away.
‘Was he embarrassed?’ my friend asked, even though she knew the answer.
‘No, of course not. I was embarrassed.’
‘These guys, they just think, well it’s worth a shot, and then don’t give it another thought, do they?’ she said.
‘Right. And there I was, feeling embarrassed, and ashamed. And he had no idea about how he had made me feel. And even if he did have an idea, he simply didn’t care.’
I’d met this man a few times over the weeks I was going to the bar. There were always lots of people around, and he was friendly and chatty, and because when the sun comes out I feel friendly and chatty too, we had talked a little bit – nothing much, just a ‘isn’t this great! What a lovely venue! What lovely weather!’ I was just being friendly, and I thought he was just being friendly too.
So when I found him in the toilets, it was a bit of a shock. And then, afterwards, I found myself reviewing all my actions. Had the fact I was chatting to him given the impression that I was looking for something more? Had the fact I’d said hello given that impression? Was it my general summery breezy attitude that suggested I wanted something else? I kept asking what I had done, to provoke this man into doing what he did.
When, of course, it was what he had done that was the problem. It was him that had behaved badly, not me. So why was I the one feeling embarrassed? Why was I the one feeling like I didn’t really want to go back to the bar again, in case I saw him again, and felt awkward? Why did I feel ashamed, and like I had done something wrong, when all I had done was follow the rules that a woman should be ‘nice’ and welcoming, and he had broken all of the rules and chosen to come into the women’s toilets?
On a rational level, I knew that it wasn’t my actions that had caused this. And yet, I was the one who felt in the wrong. I was the one who felt I had ‘led him on’ by being friendly and this was the result.
It’s no surprise I felt like this. After all, this is a message women and girls get bombarded with every day.
It’s one of the great contradictions in our skewed up attitude towards sexual assault. On the one hand, we teach girls from an early age that the most important thing is to be ‘nice’. We tell them that to be argumentative, confrontational, to stand up for oneself, is ‘unladylike’. And the message is that this is especially true in women’s relations to men. It’s why I have, in the past, found myself talking to men I really don’t want to talk to, because to tell him to go away, that I’ve got better things to do with my time than talk to them, is to transgress the rule that women must be ‘nice’ and ‘accommodating.’
At the same time, we tell women that if they talk to a man, and he then assaults her, then she is to blame. We ask women what they did to ‘provoke’ the assault. We ask whether she ‘led him on’, whether she led him to believe through her behaviour that she was ‘up for it’. We don’t talk about his behaviour. We don’t talk about the fact that talking to a woman isn’t a ‘free pass’. We tell women to be nice, and then we tell her that her niceness ‘led him on’. We find a way to blame her for any violence committed against her. It’s a pretty horrendous and dangerous double bind.
In the Guardian last month, there was an article by David Foster saying that projects like Everyday Sexism, and campaigns against street harassment, are trying to destroy flirting. It was the usual bluster that seemed to miss the crucial difference between mutual flirting, and harassment and assault.
No-where in the article did it consider how women felt. No-where did it consider that one of the consequences of experiencing harassment and assault is that it might make women feel a bit wary of a man flirting with her. Nor did it consider that if that is the case, then that’s not the fault of Everyday Sexism. It’s the fault of men who choose to harass and assault women.
My experience last summer means that now, when a man I don’t know is friendly and wants to talk to me, I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to joke about the weather or the music. I don’t want to fulfil my expected role of being ‘nice’ and receptive to a man’s attentions. Because I don’t want to risk another man deciding it’s an invitation. I don’t want to be put in the position – again – where me being nice results in me being assaulted, or nearly assaulted.
After all, this isn’t the first time this has happened. And I would prefer it to be the last.
It’s so messed up that I have been the one to feel shame and embarrassment whenever incidents like this happen. That it’s me that is left to question my actions, whilst the men just don’t seem to care. It’s not ok that it was me who felt like I shouldn’t go back to the bar (I did, the following week, and I told my friend what had happened, a bit embarrassed, in case he thought I was over-reacting). It’s not ok that I was made to feel like that, because I hadn’t done anything wrong.
And it’s not ok that because of the actions of a minority of men, I feel like I have to change my behaviour. It’s not ok that because of the actions of a few men, I no longer feel happy or comfortable talking to men I don’t know.
Summer is nearly here, and I’m sure I’ll be back at the bar, wearing a summer dress with a pint of beer in my hand. But this time, I’ll just talk to my friends. And if any man tries to talk to me, I won’t care if he thinks I’m unfriendly, if he thinks I’m ‘not nice’. Because it’s not my fault that past consequences of being friendly have been painful.
The next time a male journalist or man on the street moans about feminism killing flirting, perhaps they should lay the blame in the right place. Because if I don’t want to talk to you, it’s not because I’m a feminist. It’s because too many men have taught me that the consequences of being friendly are simply too nasty to risk.