I do not want my rapist to be raped.
Congress appointed a commission to study how to reduce prison rape. In 2007, there were an estimated 60,500 rapes in federal and state prisons. See NYT article here. There are about 1.6 million people incarcerated. A Bureau of Justice report on sexual violence says there were around 3 reported rapes for every 1000 inmates. If you do the math, the Justice Department gave the Congressional committee an estimate that is around 10 times the number of reported assaults. Most will not report the attacks. Not only are there more juveniles in with adults than ever before, but about 5% of the prison population are non-citizens who are afraid of being deported if they file charges. Just as rape victims in the ordinary world outside prison are unlikely to report rape; prisoners must be even less likely, seeing as they have to face their attackers in their cell every day (most assaults are committed in cells at night by fellow prisoners); and because they will likely get laughed out of the water.
We think it's funny that prisoners are subjected to rape. Think about it. How many jokes have you heard about it? We're starting to realize those who joke about rape in general are Neanderthals. But even the well-educated and good among us still joke about prison rape.
But I don't want my rapist to be raped.
When I was at court, waiting for my rapist to take a plea deal, the victim's advocate (whom I admired, and who gave me great comfort and strength) said, "don't worry, he'll be someone's bitch as soon as he's locked away." He's pretty and he's short. He won't stand a chance.
I was raped. Why would I want the same for my rapist?
People want revenge. An eye for an eye. But that would be legitimizing the violence that was done me. I am here to say rape is wrong. Under all circumstances. On moral grounds, rape is never OK. For practical reasons, tolerating rape in prison makes post-incarceration life even more precarious and unproductive. We are creating thousands of victims who will face the reality of PTSD and all that does to make employment and healthy participation in society difficult. PTSD is difficult enough for the general population. Add PTSD to a criminal past and you've got yourself thousands of very broken people. And they are walking amongst us.
So for pete's sake, if you can't muster up the moral courage to say rape is a crime even against rapists, then simply act with self-interest: say prison rape is wrong because you don't want your own neighborhoods wracked with the consequences of trauma perpetuated in prison, and let loose to the world outside. I know what rape and PTSD does to a girl who basically had it all. I fear for what it does to those who started out with so little.
Rape is wrong. Even against my rapist.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
Traumatized Men: School Shooting and Male Rape
The swine flu lunacy has reached a peak: a parent in my school district pulled a gun on the Superintendent at a school my daughter will attend in a few years. Why? Because the district isn't closing the schools in spite of there being a few cases of the swine flu. see article
Reasonable people disagree about whether or not to close the schools. And even if most arguing in favor of keeping the schools open were considered UNreasonable, it is not reasonable to pull a gun on a school official and threaten his life.
The school went into lockdown, the kids were on the floor for an hour, they were crying and frantically texting their parents . . . and the Superintendent was skilled enough to get the gun away from the parent and pin him to the ground until the SWAT team shot the door hinges apart so they could rescue him. The children have forever had their sense of safety and trust compromised. And the Superintendent, in facing death, is being hailed as a hero -- but how is he really feeling? How is he going to feel in a few weeks when the adrenaline has stopped rushing, and people have quieted their praise?
We expect men to be tough, to fight and defend us when necessary, and to not be cowed by frightening situations. That's a lot to live up to when you see your life flash before your eyes. If I were the Superintendent's wife, I'd be worried that he doesn't have much in the way of a socially acceptable "safe space" in which to grieve his vulnerability and the violation of his safety.
As a female, I have to admit that the grieving process regarding my own trauma has been considerably eased by my gender. It's my gender that pretty much made me vulnerable in the first place, so I'm not going to expound much further on the benefits of being female in a misogynistic world. But I am allowed to grieve. Men who are traumatized . . . it's not so easily done.
I am reminded at times like these of an old love. When I was 19 I met him on a Greyhound. He was traveling the country with his backpack, and I was returning home after a solo camping trip in Eastern Washington. He stayed with me and my mom and sister for a while. The next time I saw him was a few months later, after he had returned to his home in Maine. He was changed. He told me after a few days something he hadn't revealed to anyone else: on his way through Chicago he stayed at the home of a man who raped him.
I can still feel how shocked and humiliated and scared he was. And I feel shame now, especially after having been raped myself, for how inadequate I was in helping him. I was of course horrified and tried to be a comfort. But I didn't understand how deeply such trauma flows into all aspects of a person's personality and actions. I got mad at him because he took us on a road trip to Boston in a van with all his friends and I just sort of faded into the background. I got mad that everyone was doing shrooms and acid, including him. Now I know he wanted the distraction, the escape, the protection of a crowd, the laughter, the obliteration of reality. Now I know he didn't have a whole lot of options for dealing with his fear and grief.
And so we talk and write and blog about it. It makes people uncomfortable. It brings up ugly stuff that I know my husband for one sometimes wishes I would let lie. But being quiet doesn't actually bring any peace. Not talking is what gets us into the dark hole in the first place. We have to talk . . . so that at some point in the future we will all -- including men -- have a safer space in which to grieve and heal.
Reasonable people disagree about whether or not to close the schools. And even if most arguing in favor of keeping the schools open were considered UNreasonable, it is not reasonable to pull a gun on a school official and threaten his life.
The school went into lockdown, the kids were on the floor for an hour, they were crying and frantically texting their parents . . . and the Superintendent was skilled enough to get the gun away from the parent and pin him to the ground until the SWAT team shot the door hinges apart so they could rescue him. The children have forever had their sense of safety and trust compromised. And the Superintendent, in facing death, is being hailed as a hero -- but how is he really feeling? How is he going to feel in a few weeks when the adrenaline has stopped rushing, and people have quieted their praise?
We expect men to be tough, to fight and defend us when necessary, and to not be cowed by frightening situations. That's a lot to live up to when you see your life flash before your eyes. If I were the Superintendent's wife, I'd be worried that he doesn't have much in the way of a socially acceptable "safe space" in which to grieve his vulnerability and the violation of his safety.
As a female, I have to admit that the grieving process regarding my own trauma has been considerably eased by my gender. It's my gender that pretty much made me vulnerable in the first place, so I'm not going to expound much further on the benefits of being female in a misogynistic world. But I am allowed to grieve. Men who are traumatized . . . it's not so easily done.
I am reminded at times like these of an old love. When I was 19 I met him on a Greyhound. He was traveling the country with his backpack, and I was returning home after a solo camping trip in Eastern Washington. He stayed with me and my mom and sister for a while. The next time I saw him was a few months later, after he had returned to his home in Maine. He was changed. He told me after a few days something he hadn't revealed to anyone else: on his way through Chicago he stayed at the home of a man who raped him.
I can still feel how shocked and humiliated and scared he was. And I feel shame now, especially after having been raped myself, for how inadequate I was in helping him. I was of course horrified and tried to be a comfort. But I didn't understand how deeply such trauma flows into all aspects of a person's personality and actions. I got mad at him because he took us on a road trip to Boston in a van with all his friends and I just sort of faded into the background. I got mad that everyone was doing shrooms and acid, including him. Now I know he wanted the distraction, the escape, the protection of a crowd, the laughter, the obliteration of reality. Now I know he didn't have a whole lot of options for dealing with his fear and grief.
And so we talk and write and blog about it. It makes people uncomfortable. It brings up ugly stuff that I know my husband for one sometimes wishes I would let lie. But being quiet doesn't actually bring any peace. Not talking is what gets us into the dark hole in the first place. We have to talk . . . so that at some point in the future we will all -- including men -- have a safer space in which to grieve and heal.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Watch your Language
A 15-year-old Black girl was raped in Florida recently, by six men, at gun point (the Whataboutourdaughters.com blog brought this to my attention). Watch this video and listen to the interviewer. Listen to every word.
Did you hear what I heard?
The interviewer asked the perp: "Did you guys take advantage of that girl?"
Take advantage?! To take advantage is to take the upper hand, seize opportunity in an unequal competition, exploit a weakness or mistake someone else has made. It's that last part that has me seeing red . . . that these six men "took advantage" of the young girl focuses on the contributions of all parties, including the girl, to her rape -- instead of linguistically focusing entirely on the violent crime that is 100% the responsibility of the perpetrators.
But it's more than that. I have to rely on my sense of language as a native speaker of English. How do you, YOU, use the phrase "to take advantage of"? This is how I use it: my husband and I recently bought over a hundred dollars worth of stuff, plants and such, from Home Depot. We got to the car and in scrutinizing the receipt, realized many of the items hadn't been charged to us. Now, 98% of the time, I march right back in, albeit reluctantly, point out their mistake, and cough up more money. I don't want the teller to get in trouble; I don't want the business to lose money; I don't want to have a big black puddle of a stain on my conscience. But this time . . . well . . .? It was Home Depot. We've spent thousands there. My anti-corporate prejudice (in spite of my knowing I depend heavily on corporations) won out, and my normally intact conscience took a holiday. We considered it our lucky day.
That is taking advantage. We exploited someone else's mistake. Things turned our way, we had the upper hand because we had knowledge of a mistake that someone else did not, and we rolled with it. We did the wrong thing. Unfortunately, humans are very susceptible to this sort of moral justification and sneakiness. We often take advantage when we think our conscience won't be too marred. We put the situation in the scales, weighing the amount of harm done others against the amount of gain for ourselves, and if it's not too terribly awful for the other party, we justify giving ourselves the bonus.
Or is that just MY morality shtick? Am I the only one who thinks "taking advantage" is something that ranges from a little bit creepy to pretty darn disgusting -- but not generally completely devoid of any moral reasoning?
I'll tell you what the first rapist in this case did that was "taking advantage" of the 15-year-old victim: when she went to his apartment (she apparently knew him) and the door was closed, the perp asked her for sex. That asking is taking advantage -- of a closed door, of his age, of her innocence and immaturity, of her physical weakness in comparison to him, of her perhaps unwise decision to enter an man's house, even though she may have considered him friendly and a friend. His even ASKING for sex was taking advantage.
If that's where the story ended, the reporter would have been entirely appropriate in asking the perp, "did you take advantage of that girl?"
But that's not where it ended. He pulled out a gun, and forced her to have sex with him, and then five others.
Is that taking advantage? Let me ask you something different, to clarify my point. If burglars use crowbars and an ax to break through your locked front door, do we say they took advantage of your failure to have a metal door? If a sniper kills seven people in the street, do we say he took advantage of their not constantly looking up for potential killers? In both cases, yes, the criminals took the advantage. But do we SAY they took advantage?
No. We don't use those words. Because when people have overwhelming and complete power over other people, we focus on the force they use -- not on what the victims did to allow the scales to tip in the direction of the perpetrators. When force is overwhelming, there are no scales, there is no weighing in the balances. And there is no detectable moral reasoning -- that fudging we do with our justifications. There is no possible explanation except brute force.
When that young woman had a gun pointed at her, she was confronted with overwhelming criminal force. When she alone was pitted against six men, she faced overwhelming criminal force. There was no competition. There was nothing she could do. She had no way of getting a so-called advantage back. She was tortured and terrorized. And the criminals were not pursuing an opportunity for themselves. They were destroying an innocent life.
So please. Can we watch what comes out of our mouths? And if something pops out -- hold it out in front of your nose and stare at it a while. Does it betray some assumptions you didn't realize you were making?
We all have a role to play in reducing the incidence of rape. Watching our language is something all of us can do. Because how we talk about rape is how we think about rape. And those beliefs make it either rather easy, or very difficult, for rapists to do what they do.
P.S. Did you hear, in that video interview, the neighborhood parent say that what was so terrible was that the rapists "took away her privacy"? I've been trying to wrap my mind around that one. I just don't have the energy right now. Maybe you can help us out? What do you think of his choice of words?
Did you hear what I heard?
The interviewer asked the perp: "Did you guys take advantage of that girl?"
Take advantage?! To take advantage is to take the upper hand, seize opportunity in an unequal competition, exploit a weakness or mistake someone else has made. It's that last part that has me seeing red . . . that these six men "took advantage" of the young girl focuses on the contributions of all parties, including the girl, to her rape -- instead of linguistically focusing entirely on the violent crime that is 100% the responsibility of the perpetrators.
But it's more than that. I have to rely on my sense of language as a native speaker of English. How do you, YOU, use the phrase "to take advantage of"? This is how I use it: my husband and I recently bought over a hundred dollars worth of stuff, plants and such, from Home Depot. We got to the car and in scrutinizing the receipt, realized many of the items hadn't been charged to us. Now, 98% of the time, I march right back in, albeit reluctantly, point out their mistake, and cough up more money. I don't want the teller to get in trouble; I don't want the business to lose money; I don't want to have a big black puddle of a stain on my conscience. But this time . . . well . . .? It was Home Depot. We've spent thousands there. My anti-corporate prejudice (in spite of my knowing I depend heavily on corporations) won out, and my normally intact conscience took a holiday. We considered it our lucky day.
That is taking advantage. We exploited someone else's mistake. Things turned our way, we had the upper hand because we had knowledge of a mistake that someone else did not, and we rolled with it. We did the wrong thing. Unfortunately, humans are very susceptible to this sort of moral justification and sneakiness. We often take advantage when we think our conscience won't be too marred. We put the situation in the scales, weighing the amount of harm done others against the amount of gain for ourselves, and if it's not too terribly awful for the other party, we justify giving ourselves the bonus.
Or is that just MY morality shtick? Am I the only one who thinks "taking advantage" is something that ranges from a little bit creepy to pretty darn disgusting -- but not generally completely devoid of any moral reasoning?
I'll tell you what the first rapist in this case did that was "taking advantage" of the 15-year-old victim: when she went to his apartment (she apparently knew him) and the door was closed, the perp asked her for sex. That asking is taking advantage -- of a closed door, of his age, of her innocence and immaturity, of her physical weakness in comparison to him, of her perhaps unwise decision to enter an man's house, even though she may have considered him friendly and a friend. His even ASKING for sex was taking advantage.
If that's where the story ended, the reporter would have been entirely appropriate in asking the perp, "did you take advantage of that girl?"
But that's not where it ended. He pulled out a gun, and forced her to have sex with him, and then five others.
Is that taking advantage? Let me ask you something different, to clarify my point. If burglars use crowbars and an ax to break through your locked front door, do we say they took advantage of your failure to have a metal door? If a sniper kills seven people in the street, do we say he took advantage of their not constantly looking up for potential killers? In both cases, yes, the criminals took the advantage. But do we SAY they took advantage?
No. We don't use those words. Because when people have overwhelming and complete power over other people, we focus on the force they use -- not on what the victims did to allow the scales to tip in the direction of the perpetrators. When force is overwhelming, there are no scales, there is no weighing in the balances. And there is no detectable moral reasoning -- that fudging we do with our justifications. There is no possible explanation except brute force.
When that young woman had a gun pointed at her, she was confronted with overwhelming criminal force. When she alone was pitted against six men, she faced overwhelming criminal force. There was no competition. There was nothing she could do. She had no way of getting a so-called advantage back. She was tortured and terrorized. And the criminals were not pursuing an opportunity for themselves. They were destroying an innocent life.
So please. Can we watch what comes out of our mouths? And if something pops out -- hold it out in front of your nose and stare at it a while. Does it betray some assumptions you didn't realize you were making?
We all have a role to play in reducing the incidence of rape. Watching our language is something all of us can do. Because how we talk about rape is how we think about rape. And those beliefs make it either rather easy, or very difficult, for rapists to do what they do.
P.S. Did you hear, in that video interview, the neighborhood parent say that what was so terrible was that the rapists "took away her privacy"? I've been trying to wrap my mind around that one. I just don't have the energy right now. Maybe you can help us out? What do you think of his choice of words?
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