(Source: khaleesi, via namflashback)
Yesterday, prosecutors decided that they won’t press charges against Greg Kelly, son of police commissioner Ray Kelly. He was accused of raping a woman—I wrote about it here. I sounded pretty sure I believed he was guilty. As far as the courts are concerned, there wasn’t enough evidence to indict him. Am I sorry? No.
And I’m not sorry about calling Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was found not guilty of rape in a court of law, a rapist. And the next time someone comes forward saying he or she was raped by another someone, whether that person is a powerful government official or a friend, I will always, ALWAYS believe the accuser. I will always support him or her even before I know all of the “facts” of the situation, or, more likely, have heard the two sides, and probably after. Why? Because we live in a culture so permissive to rapists and so punishing to rape survivors that to do anything else would be monstrous.
The Post published a picture of Kelly’s accuser yesterday, identifying her by name. They did the same to the woman who accused two cops of raping her. They called Nafi Diallo, or, as you may know her “the maid,” of being a liar, a sex worker, a gold digger, a drug dealer. They have, in the words of Intel’s Joe Coscarelli, engaged in “a bullying tactic that could prevent women from reporting sexual abuse crimes.” This is not the exception. This is the norm.
Greg Kelly, by the way, was deemed unchargable not because he didn’t rape his accuser, but because it would be impossible to prove that she was, as she claimed, too intoxicated to consent. This is what rape culture is. And what it means to the women who live in it is that they live with the very real possibility—a one in five chance—that they too will face the same impossible choice: stay quiet, live with what happened, watch your rapist walk around free, or accuse him or her, and have your entire life dragged through the mud. Have every single choice you’ve ever made examined publicly to see if maybe it’s your “fault” that this happened. Be put on trial—publicly—in a way your rapist will never, ever will be.
Let me tell you about two of my friends who had terrible things happen to them. The first is a man. He was falsely accused of rape by a woman he was friends with. He had never slept with her. She later recanted and told everyone the truth of what (hadn’t) happened. He is still living with the consequences of that action today: it made it very hard for him to trust women, to be sexually open. It really fucked him up. He did nothing wrong.
The second friend is a woman. In college, she was raped by a man she was on a date with. The man’s older brother was very important in the ROTC of that college. On this campus, the ROTC was very powerful, and had a strong reputation for honor and excellence. When she came forward about what happened to her, she was called a liar and a slut. The ROTC members embarked on a campaign of harassment that forced her to drop out of college. Nothing happened to the man. The administration of the college refused to get involved. She also did nothing wrong.
I am truly, deeply sad for both of these friends. I really do understand the harm a false rape accusation can do to a person. It can ruin someone’s life. But it still does not compare to the damage that rape can do. And unfortunately, rape is more common by a factor of hundreds. If you think you don’t know someone who was raped, you are probably wrong. Many rape victims are never able to come forward about what happened to them.
When the Post goes out of its way to punish women who speak up about rape, women everywhere hear and understand the message: stay in line. Be quiet. It’ll be easier for you if you just lie back and take it. Here is another story that I happened to come across yesterday, just in the normal course of reading the internet.
I was, as a teenager, locked in a room with my rapist by school administrators and told, “Don’t come out until you’ve worked out your differences.” He spent the entire time threatening to kill me, my family, and my dogs, if I ever reported anything he ever did to me again. When the head counselor eventually came back to that room, I was asked if we’d managed to work things out, and I confirmed that we had.Because I would have said anything to get the fuck out of that room.
He raped me again and again over the next three years.
Again, this is not the exception. It is the rule. If you go looking, you can find hundreds, thousands of variations on this story. I understand why people don’t want to accept this truth: it’s horrible. Nobody wants to think it is their mom, their sister, their friend who things like this happen to. Better and easier to think that she’s lying or that she somehow deserved what she got. For women, it’s a way of warding off evil. Maybe if I can figure out what she did “wrong” I can avoid her fate. Did she dress slutty? Get drunk? Go home with a stranger? Wear headphones? It is tempting to think that if you are a good girl and do everything “right,” you’ll be safe. The truth is that in this culture, nobody is safe.
Even so, we look for reasons to excuse the rapist, to mitigate the horror. Even in the most cut-and-dried “honest rape” cases, and even in the New York Times, the blame is shifted.
Roxane Gay, in her amazing essay The Careless Language of Sexual Violence, examines the case of an eleven-year-old girl gang raped by 18 men:
The Times article was entitled, “Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town,” as if the victim in question was the town itself. James McKinley Jr., the article’s author, focused on how the men’s lives would be changed forever, how the town was being ripped apart, how those poor boys might never be able to return to school. There was discussion of how the eleven-year-old girl, the child, dressed like a twenty-year-old, implying that there is a realm of possibility where a woman can “ask for it” and that it’s somehow understandable that eighteen men would rape a child. There were even questions about the whereabouts of the mother, given, as we all know, that a mother must be with her child at all times or whatever ill may befall the child is clearly the mother’s fault. Strangely, there were no questions about the whereabouts of the father while this rape was taking place.The overall tone of the article was what a shame it all was, how so many lives were affected by this one terrible event. Little addressed the girl, the child. It was an eleven-year-old girl whose body was ripped apart, not a town. It was an eleven-year-old girl whose life was ripped apart, not the lives of the men who raped her. It is difficult for me to make sense of how anyone could lose sight of that and yet it isn’t.
These little things, these seemingly unimportant things like tone and word choice, like hate rags publishing pictures of rape victims, like all of the tiny ways that we, every day, as culture, signal to potential rapists to go ahead, it’s not so bad, she probably wants it anyway, wink wink. That is rape culture. There’s no neutral ground. You are either fighting hard against it—speaking up to defend rape victims, not laughing at rape jokes, refusing to accept the excuses people make for rapists—or you are part of it. Silence abets rapists. And THAT is why I will always take the side of the person making a rape accusation, and why you should too. When the playing field is level, I will wait to be vocal. I’ll listen to both sides, or just stay out of it altogether. But in a world where trying to bring your rapist to justice puts you in line for something that might be more difficult to endure than the rape itself, victims need all the support they can get.
Donald Glover (via witch-or-not)
Kind of makes you think, though…why do people joke about murder but not rape? They’re both equally horrible, so why is one of them considered ~~~socially acceptable while the other is not? W H Y
(via timeyywimey)
W H Y, you wonder? rape is DRASTICALLY underreported and the vast majority of rapists/molesters/etc are never punished. rape is a crime where the victim goes on trial. rape is a crime that a lot of people is think not really a crime if the victim was “asking for it” by daring to be drunk, wear certain clothes, trusting certain people, not being a virgin, flirting with someone, or whatever victim-blaming bullshit is in play. rape victims are constantly revictimized by a society that doesn’t give a shit about them. because of this and this and this and THIS, that’s why it’s not fucking acceptable.
(via 101110)
fuck you, donald glover.
(via poopballs)
(Source: feistyfeminist, via poopballs)
I wish that this was not a post that had to be made. Like, I wish that explaining why “Men Who Don’t Have to Ask” lists are a things that just should not exist was not something that had to be done but they keep happening so here I am.
No man, no matter how attractive their face is, has the right to “not have to ask.” No human being has that right, actually. If there isn’t a mutual agreement in any form of sexual activity then that is a sexual assault. No matter how physically attracted you are to that person it is still a sexual assault. Even if you are sexuallyattracted to that person it is a sexual assault. Telling someone basically that they are hot enough to rape you is enabling rape apologism to a whole new disgusting degree.
Even if the person is fictional it is not okay. Season 2, Episode 3 of Mad Men, “The Benefactor”, featured a scene* with Don Draper and Bobbie Barrett where he shoved his hand up her dress and says to her, “Do what I say. I will ruin him.” His hand… was up… her skirt… as a power play. The number of people that still say that this scene was “hot” and “sexy” is ridiculous. Moreso, the number of women that say that they would have loved to be in Bobbie’s place during this scene is disturbing because his hand was up her skirt as a way to show that he is in control of the situation. Like, why would you want to be in that position? I get that Jon Hamm looks like Prince Eric and that for some reason makes too much of what Don Draper does as a character acceptable to the public eye** but does that really make it okay for him to grab your vagina without your permission? The answer is: No. Not ever. It is not something that is okay to joke about either*** because you know what, at lot of people out there will use the excuse of your kidding ways to rape others.
And I get that this is the internet and people feel that things should not be taken seriously but the thing is that they really and truly are. The outstanding number of females that accept, approve of, and participate in any sort of “Men Who Don’t Have to Ask” lists are giving off the impression that men don’t have to ask if their face is nice enough. You may think that you are speaking in some hypothetical situation that will never become real because these are celebrities so that won’t be a thing that happens in real life guyzz but creating this mentality goes deeper than a hypothetical situation with a celebrity to be honest. There are guys out there that need that excuse that rape doesn’t really count when the person they are raping is sexually attracted to them. There are guys out there than need the excuse that you said certain men don’t have to ask. Creating that mentality that it is okay for some people in this world to involve themselves with you sexually without your permission goes beyond silly play on the internet— it feeds into rape culture.
*Will forever be the most disgusting thing that I have ever witnessed on television by the way.
** That is a conversation for another day.
*** This works both ways. Horrible Bosses was mostly disgusting because of the number of people who thought (and still think) that Jennifer Aniston’s character was funny because she was forcing her employee to have sex with him (because you know rape is funny when a woman does it. Especially if that woman is thought of as attractive. Ha haha ha ammirite?). I wasn’t aware that the terms “maneater” and “rapist” were interchangeable but it sure did teach me new things with all of the rape jokes!!!! Like, how disgusting whoever wrote that shit is!!!!!!!
I have a problem with Donald Glover. It revolves around that whole rape-as-a-punchline thing he does. I’m sure even as I type this that next to no one will give a shit and it’ll ultimately be swept under the rug as the Donald Glover Dick-Sucking Bandwagon rolls on by, but it legitimately bothers me. It’s not even like it’s a one-time thing with him. It that were the case, I probably wouldn’t care so much. I would just side-eye him and carry on. But no, he just keeps coming back to it. This guy has used rape as a punchline in every single endeavor that he’s undertaken. Doesn’t anyone notice this?
For starters, there’s his twitter, which served as the impetus for this post:
That just makes sense, right? Because when something annoys you, rape threats, however half-hearted and facetious, are the next logical step.
I don’t even know what to say this. It’s so ridiculously asinine– I just can’t.
There’s Bro Rape, starring Donald as Bro Rapist, in which he and the other dudebros from Derrick Comedy put on a mock-investigative report in order to bring attention to the the bro rape epidemic, but what they’re really mocking is rape in general because it’s a totally hilarious thing and should be treated as such.
He raps about rape in two of his songs. In “Put It in My Video” he brags:
I’m blowin’ up like my swagger on the Gaza
I’m writing movies where I’m making out with Aubrey Plaza
And homegirl my homegirl, it is not like that
But if she tried to rape me, I would not fight backAnd again in “Not Going Back” he states:
That’s why these fuckin’ MCs want their asses back
Don’t you know that I’m a rapist, ask a trackPersonally, I find the first example more problematic than the second. I don’t expect someone like Donald Glover to understand what’s wrong with saying, “If she tried to rape me, I would not fight back,” but it is so, so wrong. He’s obviously bought into the bullshit notion that not fighting back means you enjoy it. What’s worse, he’s perpetuating that bullshit notion. If what it comes down to is him wanting to fuck his hot friend, why not just say that? Why bring up rape in the first place? Donald Glover is not completely stupid. I’m sure he could’ve written some other lyrics. In the second example, he’s just being his douchetastic self, boasting about success he hasn’t earned and skills he doesn’t have. Why he needed to brag about being a rapist to do that, I’m not sure, but I’m betting it has something to do with him being a douche. Then again I don’t know what I expect from a dude who’s lyrics are rife with misogyny.
Before it was removed from YouTube as a result of a copyright claim, I had the chance to see a video of the stand-up portion of his iamdonald tour. I’m sure you’ve figured as much, but there are rape jokes there too. At one point he says that if someone tried to rape him, “they would have to be really tricky about it.” Oh, I see. Because rapists are usually upstanding gentlemen who are straightforward about their intentions, but in order to pull one past Donald Glover they would have to resort to trickery. Because he’s too smart/suspecting/discerning/whatever to be bamboozled by the usual rape methods. I see.
I know we live in a rape culture, but when are we as a society going to realize that rape jokes in stand-up are cliché? I’m aware that controversial topics have and will always be joked about in comedy, but so many comedians these days think rape is this super edgy topic and that by including rape jokes in their routine they are showing how fearless they are and that they are willing to push the envelope. Stop. Just stop it. Everybody is doing rape jokes these days. You aren’t pushing shit. At this point you’re just following the trend.
Then there’s this interview in which he says:
“I guess for a dude it’s never gonna be totally awful. You can’t really get raped unless it’s by a dude. If a girl forces sex on you it’s like, yeah, it was awful…but I had sex! I wasn’t in the mood…but I was hard.”
To all dudes out there who have been raped, don’t be bummed out about it. Just look on the bright side. You got laid! Focus on what’s really important. The pros outweigh the cons, at least according to Donald Glover. Honestly, it’s baffling how anyone could be this. damn. ignorant.
I don’t doubt for a second that Donald Glover is a nice guy. I’d even go so far as to say I suspect he is a Nice Guy®. But for all his self-awareness, he is still a misogynist douchebag (really, ladies, he just wants to be treated like a piece of meat) who chooses to perpetuate rape culture.
But I’m probably just taking it all too seriously. Donald Glover’s probably a nice guy and he’s probably never raped anyone, never would, and doesn’t condone it. They’re just jokes, right? Wrong. Jokes are supposed to be funny. Rape jokes don’t exist in a vacuum. They exist to minimize the experience of those who’ve suffered it and laugh at their trauma. Rape isn’t a punchline, asshole. Seriously, shut the fuck up, Donald Glover.
They say: That 11-year-old girl had it coming. Those poor boys have to live with this for the rest of their lives.
I say: WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD?
THIS is rape culture. When a child needs to take responsibility for being gang-raped.
“Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?” said Ms. Harrison, one of a handful of neighbors who would speak on the record. “How can you have an 11-year-old child missing down in the Quarters?”
UM… WHERE WERE THE PARENTS OF THE BOYS AND MEN RAPING A CHILD? HOW CAN YOU HAVE A SON RAPING CHILDREN DOWN IN THE QUARTERS?
The author says the town is wondering “how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?” as if they were tricked into gang raping a child. Then there’s this quote: “It’s just destroyed our community,” said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. “These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives.”
Oh, the boys will have to live with this. Please, won’t someone do something to help the boys get through this!
