05 January 2007 21:54

A public service announcement from your friendly feminist about town

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Right, so one of the problems your average feminist-about-town will have every now and again is that there will be a high-profile story about rape and she will have to listen to people's opinions about it, which are generally very stupid. Point 1: There is no such thing as helpful or concerned advice about rape prevention. There, I said it. There is nothing you can say that women have not already heard, and most of it amounts to my/our taking precautions that you/men don't have to or wouldn't. I can't prevent rape. Can't do it, and am resentful at the implication that I somehow have more power to do so than rapists have power to, oh, not rape people. (Side note: do men not get offended at the idea that men, as a group, have so little self-control that women need to take total responsibility for male sexual response? Because I'd be offended. Also, if I were a straight man, I'd fight these rape myths if only out of self-interest: fewer terrified women - and it is a terror campaign, make no mistake - means a larger pool of willing, confident potential partners, and isn't that kind of the goal? Oh, wait, no: it's us feminists who hate all men and think of them all as rapists, not the people who think that guy X won't be able to keep it in his pants when presented with an attractive woman in a short skirt who perhaps has had a beer too many.) Point 2: The vast, vast, vast majority of rapes are perpetrated by someone the victim knows, and often by someone she trusts. That was certainly the case with me, though I was well under the age of consent. Unless your advice boils down to "Don't leave the house and never be alone with anyone ever," it's not going to do much good. If your advice boils down to "Don't leave the house and never be alone with anyone ever," fuck you. Point 3: There is no analogy to be made between cars, wallets, or apartments/houses and my body. You see, I have a car, a wallet, and an apartment of my own. Those things are stuff. This is my body. There is no humane analogy to be made between my body and a man's stuff, and it is insulting to suggest that they are equivalent. My asking to be able to move around freely without being constantly faced with the threat of physical bodily assault is not akin to a man flashing money in a bad neighborhood or leaving his doors unlocked. My asking to be able to go about my life without the threat of rape is like a man asking to be able to go about his life without the threat of someone grabbing him, forcing him down, and repeatedly jamming a knitting needle into his urethra. Not an unreasonable request, is it? Drunk or sober, dressed in speedos or a tux or a suit of armor, nobody's going to say that the guy with the knitting needle wounds was asking for it, or was unclear, or had taken insufficient steps to protect himself against the crochet hook, are they? The PROBLEM is that my body, as a female body, connotes property; that these analogies to loose change and Ford Tauruses come so easily and undergo so little scrutiny is the problem. A body. Mine. Got it now? I think a lot of this comes from men's defensiveness about the topic. Get the fuck over it, already, and don't come to the table unless you have something of value to say. love, might