Hello. It’s been a while since I’ve written here, and certainly things have changed, politically, socially, and if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know where I stand on a lot of it.
It had to have been something singular to push me to write here, again. Something that made me so angry that I needed to put pen to paper (keyboard to screen?) and write it out, not just for me, but for survivors, victims, women, who are feeling understandably horrified and triggered by an absolutely vile discussion going on right now. It starts with this article, by Kathleen Stock, GC darling, and increasingly reactionary anti-feminist.
“A reduced risk is better than nothing,” Kathleen notes, in her article about how women can (should?) prevent rape. Sorry, “reduce the risk” of rape. What prompted Kathleen to take this position? Oh, she’s just coming to the defence of Giorgia Meloni’s partner, Andrea Giambruno. You know, Giorgia Meloni, the Prime Minister of Italy, who leads a far right party that is arguably fascist, whose co-founder is an avid collector and fan of Mussolini (Giorgia Meloni is also co-founder), whose party members have made Nazi salutes. You know Giorgia Meloni, whose government is stripping lesbian mothers of their parental rights via birth certificates, in a clear homophobic attack, of which you can and should read more here. You know, Giorgia Meloni, who believes in the “Great Replacement”?
In recent weeks, what Meloni calls the threatened “extinction of the Italian people” has dominated the government’s agenda.
Last month, the agriculture minister Francesco Lollobrigida claimed that unemployed Italians’ failure to do farm work was creating demand for immigration. Then he insisted that Italy “must not surrender to ethnic replacement”.
It’s fascinating that Kathleen glosses over all of that by putting it this way:
Meloni, the mother of Giambruno’s child, forged her path to power on a socially conservative platform apparently nostalgic for the Italy of the 1950s. Abortions, gay parents and immigrants are out; God, heterosexuals and patriotism are back in.
What drove Kathleen to such passion that she had to defend the partner of the far right PM of Italy is a topic for a whole other article, but it starts with “far right” and it ends with “wing creep.”
Kathleen notes that “While hosting a television debate about rape, Giambruno said: ‘If you go dancing, you have every right to get drunk — there shouldn’t be any kind of misunderstanding and any kind of problem — but if you avoid getting drunk and losing your senses, you might also avoid running into certain problems, because then you find the wolf.’”
Wolf of course, meaning rapist. Because rapists are just alphas, amirite?
What she didn’t mention is Giambruno “agreed during the show with the editor of the rightwing Libero newspaper, Pietro Senaldi, who said: ‘If you want to avoid rape, above all don’t lose consciousness, keep your wits about you.’”
But is that true? You see, Kathleen’s point is framed around an idea that feminists aren’t allowing for space to talk about rape prevention and safety tactics for young women. That seems very sensible to many, on its surface—after all, who doesn’t want to keep women safe? Who doesn’t want to avoid rape???
The problem here is manifold. One, it suggests rape is avoidable, on the whole—and therefore, those who are not avoiding it are culpable in their own rape. Even if, as Stock says later in the article, that women are not at fault for being raped, that doesn’t negate the incorrect and toxic logic of the above. If you are saying rape is avoidable, then women who are not avoiding it “enough” are putting themselves at risk, and therefore….
It’s all too easy to see how this falls into victim blaming. And no, “this isn’t victim blaming, BUT” doesn’t make it not victim blaming.
But the problem here is far deeper, to me. Is rape avoidable in this way?
You see, this is a sly, patriarchal framing. Of rape as a drunken night with a stranger (“wolf”). But the majority of rape is committed by someone the woman knows. 80% of victims know the perpetrator, and it’s often someone trusted and close. To focus on drunken stranger rape is to focus on a minority of rape, and invisibilise the reality of rape. It also creates the illusion that rape is more likely to happen in certain circumstances, like a drunk girl at a club (isn’t she so irresponsible?! She must have a terrible mother who never taught her how to not be raped). But the majority of rapes happen in the home. And as for how a woman dresses, which is one of the most vile but persistent myths about rape, I invite you to look at the heartbreaking “What were you wearing” exhibit, which showcases the outfits of real victims/survivors of sexual violence, and what they were wearing at the time.
How could these women have “cut the risk” of being raped? Not left their room that day? Worn a sack? Locked themselves in a basement until there are no men in the world?
It would be one thing if the article at any point mentioned that rape happens, unfortunately, in all contexts. Not only to women having fun on nights out, and how dare they drink too much! Unfortunately, it happens in the home, at work, in hospitals, to women old and young, sober or not. But the article doesn’t. And that itself contributes to rape culture, and an extreme lack of understanding of it.
Because all this line of thinking does, especially when pushed disgracefully here by The Times, all this line of thinking does is embolden violent men to think in backwards ways. “Women should take personal responsibility and avoid risky situations, therefore, the women who don’t do that are,” as one Tweeter put it, “fair game.” In fact, this thread is so good I’m going to quote some of it here:
Every time there’s a public push for women to take responsibility for their safety in that way, it sends a message that the women who decide ‘I’m not going to let my freedom be impacted by abusive men” are actually deciding ‘I don’t really care about my own safety’, and so it creates - in the minds of abusive men - a subset of women who have kind of chosen to make themselves fair game.
Which brings me to my next point. How much risk cutting are women expected to do? You see, plenty of brilliant women on Twitter have already made excellent points about the issues with this article—especially the point that talk of “risk cutting” shifts the onus back onto women to prevent their own rape, rather than keeping the focus on men not raping, where it should be. It also assumes that women are not already doing these things—every single woman I know, including my preteen nieces, know the “risk-cutting” behaviours that Kathleen is so fond of. Sebastian Potter reminded me of Jackson Katz’s work today, in which “he asked group of men versus women what precautions they undertook daily to ‘prevent being raped’” and these were the results:
The point is, women are already doing these things, and yet rape stats are going up, not down. That’s not because women are all running in the streets naked with giant vats of vodka, it’s because men are raping more. A friend told me today about “glass condoms,” that girls are using now when they go out, because they’re that likely to get date raped. It’s a cup cover to put over their drinks at bars.
Is that a reasonable “risk-cutting” behaviour? Should women have to live like this? Why are we writing articles and spending valuable time rehashing rape culture points of the last few decades, like “women shouldn’t get drunk,” when we could spend that time raising awareness of an epidemic of sexual violence against women, by men???
You know, in this part of the world, women are told that “risk-cutting” is not leaving the house. Risk cutting is covering your body, head to toe. Risk cutting is not talking to men, keeping your head down, and always having a male chaperone. Is that reasonable risk cutting? Should I write an article admonishing Pakistani feminists for not “letting me” tell my nieces to keep their heads down, bodies covered, hair covered, to stay home, to never feel the sunlight on their legs, the wind on their shoulders? Imagine a Pakistani politician, a patriarchal one, anti-abortion and anti-gay. If this politician’s husband said “If you go out, you have every right to go out in a tight outfit, without a male relative — there shouldn’t be any kind of misunderstanding and any kind of problem — but if you avoid going out in a tight outfit without a male relative, you might also avoid running into certain problems, because then you find the wolf,”—should I write an article defending that man? Because how dare the feminists take issue with him?
What a fucking joke.
Finally, I want to discuss the monstrous nature of vilifying feminism for not protecting girls from rape. As if feminists are to blame for not educating women about rape. Kathleen, it was the feminist consciousness-raising groups of the 70’s which helped give women the language around sexual abuse. It was feminists who raised awareness of rape as a patriarchal tool. It was feminists who formed the first rape crisis centres, and feminists who run many of them today. It was feminist campaigning that led to rape shield laws, the criminalisation of marital rape (was she supposed to “cut the risk” of that too?), statutory rape laws. And it is feminists today who are fighting against rape culture across the world, including where I sit right now, in Pakistan.
Kathleen notes, “Sexual assault is devastating for a person, both physically and psychologically, and adding undeserved blame and shaming to the mixture is extra cruel.” Indeed, so why are you defending the comments of a man doing just that?
But she can’t help herself.
Still, given that rape, precisely, is so devastating, I think we have a duty to tell women about which circumstances might make their victimisation more likely, and which might make it less. To repeat — this is not victim-blaming, nor making women responsible for violations that men choose to commit. It is more in the spirit of ‘forewarned is forearmed’. This is how dangerous men behave, and these are the environments in which they become more dangerous. This is how you can try to reduce your risk, even if you can never eliminate it. No panacea is being offered. Nothing guarantees your safety. Still, a reduced risk is better than nothing.
“A reduced risk is better than nothing.”
How does the woman stuck in an abusive relationship where she’s raped every night reduce her risk? How does a child being raped by a trusted adult figure supposed to reduce their risk? How does a woman stuck in poverty who has to walk through dark streets after her shift supposed to reduce her risk? How are women in the Subcontinent, who are told not to wear anything too tight or else they invite assault, how are they supposed to reduce their risk? How is a woman whose trusted coworker rapes her when they’re alone supposed to reduce her risk?
Because those stories are also the reality of rape. Not only a drunken night with a strange “wolf.”
Where are we going with this? Should a woman earn enough to pay for self defence training or else she didn’t do enough to avoid it? Should we only offer women remote jobs so they never leave their rooms? It cuts the risk of rape! Or should we just admonish feminists for being angry at a man telling women they can avoid rape?
Sigh.
Who needs men to reinforce patriarchy when reactionary women will do it for them, eh.
I’ve said my piece. Feel free to make of it what you will, I’m not here for discussion anymore frankly, I am simply here to remind those women who feel disenfranchised and horrified by this toxic discourse that I have solidarity with them, and that they aren’t alone. Instead of fighting with me to defend the honour of your benevolent philosopher queen, go donate to a Rape Crisis Centre instead; we’ll all be better off.