Why I Write About Rape Culture (And Believe It Exists)

Age 12. The waves were beating against my legs as they hung off the back of the inner tube. My arms hurt from gripping the handles as I bounced over the rough waters of the Mississippi. And my face hurt from smiling.

I wasn’t actually that happy, but I felt like I should probably look like I was having a good time – after all, this was summer, and I was out with my cousins in their boat on the Mississippi River. I figured I should be grateful. Somehow, I managed to keep a smile plastered on my face for a good 20 minutes, finally being pulled into the boat when the person driving got tired.

“Gee, Dianna, I thought you were out there for a long time, but you just kept smiling, so I figured everything was okay!”

Age 15. I’m sitting in the chair at the hairdresser’s, something my mom and I did as a mommy-daughter date every 6 weeks. My hair was short at that time, so it needed the upkeep. I didn’t know the hairdresser very well, and wasn’t particularly versed in the ways of hairdresser-client conversation. But, I felt I should be polite and nice, and that meant smiling from ear to ear the entire time as she cut my hair, right?

It was awkward and weird, but by this point, I’d been pretty well trained that a smile from a woman was disarming, was read as “polite” and that if I smiled to show that I was “enjoying” something, it didn’t matter what my actual feelings about the matter were.

Age 21. I’m in Oxford, England, and walking home by myself through city center at about 9:00 at night. I’ve just been out to an improv club for a fun night with my friend Scott, but unfortunately have to walk the 20 minutes back to my house by myself. As I’m walking through Cornmarket street, a homeless man yells something unintelligible at me.

“No, thank you!” I yell back and start walking hurriedly, wondering why I thanked the man for yelling at me.

Age 25. I’m home on Christmas break and having the worst day. My ex boyfriend is refusing to speak to me, I’m having severe anxiety issues, and I feel sick to my stomach most of the time. I realize that I’m supposed to stop at the local grocery store for something on my way home, and pull into the parking lot. As I’m marching inside, thinking about everything that’s going wrong in my life and all the stress that’s piling up to nearly unmanageable levels, the Salvation Army bell ringer – a man – notices my frown and yells, “Hey, smile, pretty lady.”

I have to resist flipping him off.

Women are conditioned, from birth, to be as unassuming and unresisting as possible, not to show displeasure and only to respond in the nicest of ways. In these tiny, subtle ways, our culture has invested itself in the public ownership of women’s bodies, to the point that they prioritize other people’s feelings over their own safety and their own perfectly valid reactions.

We all know how it looks. That female coworker who sends emails with emoticons to soften the blow: “I’m sorry but that report needs to be redone. :)” Women fret over how to let down nicely the boy who didn't bother to call for three hours even though you were dressed up nicely for your date. The simpering, groveling obeisance, the responses that put the feelings of the person hurting us over our own feeling of being hurt. The invalidation of our own pain out of some odd deference to that of everyone else.

Women are trained to act and see themselves as as receptacles for the feelings of others. Once you begin noticing it, you see everywhere. We wonder why women have trouble saying “no” directly when women who fiercely stand up to street harassers are met with yells of “bitch!” We wonder why women don’t take control of their own body when someone violates their boundaries after we’ve been instructing them their entire lives that their bodies are meant to be saved for their future husbands and that the men in their lives get say-so over what clothing women put on their body.

We condition and socialize and punish, and then claim that demure niceness and prioritizing sympathy for their abusers are central traits to what it means to be a woman. We lecture that “no means no,” and then we pick up toddlers who don’t want to be picked up and punish them for not giving their relatives a hug.

We spend our lives teaching women to take responsibility for every pain, hurt, and feeling they might cause others – an unhappy woman is cause for concern, just as an unabashedly and happily ambitious one is cause for ridicule.

And then we wonder at rape culture? We say that talking about the enforcement of boundary crossing, the policing of female behavior and clothing and connecting it to the ultimate crossing of boundaries is “sensational”? As though rape is some sort of revered thing that must only be discussed in hush tones behind closed doors?

We discount women’s words and women’s emotions in the smallest things, in the littlest interactions. When we tell women that they’re oversensitive, over-reacting, and, perhaps, sensationalizing their abuse for profit, we reinforce an attitude that pervades juries, judges, prosecutors, police forces. We reinforce attitudes that justify rape in the minds of the rapist, that result in victims living in hell.

I don’t write about rape culture because it’s sensational. I write about it because it is the stuff of my life, of the lives of people around me. I write about it because I think the way we talk about women’s bodies and the way we discuss our value matters in the larger scheme of violence against women.

How we talk about our culture matters. How we participate in relationships with the women around us matters. Because all lives matter. Rape isn't some sacred thing that we must only discuss "when appropriate" which is often code for never. Rape needs to be talked about, discussed, and seen for the horror it is. Talking about culture that condones and endorses rape, then, is the act of bringing light into darkness, of making it harder for evil to hide, of setting our foot down and saying "no, that's not okay because that is the mindset of the rapist."

It is not sensational. It is necessary.

Guest Post: The Ever Changing Faces of God

Dani is an obsessive geek, skeptical feminist, graphic designer and struggling writer over at crooked neighbor, crooked heart.
___________________________________

Trigger warning: self harm, sexual assault

"I did it to myself. Mea culpa, mea culpa."

I would rock back and forth, muttering those words to myself, scratching my arms and legs until they almost bled, eyes squeezed shut to keep out the images I'd just emblazoned into my mind.

You're a girl, I scolded myself. Girls aren't supposed to want sex. You're nothing but a filthy whore. You're robbing your husband; you'll have nothing to give him. You're disgusting and vile and worthless. Only evil women have desires like this.

You see, believing that my highest calling was to be a wife and mother, it occurred to me that I was ill-prepared for the physical intimacy that marriage entails. Since I was told that frequent good sex was something I owed my husband, and since sex is generally a taboo subject in conservative Christianity, I did what I thought was the most reasonable thing for me to do. I decided to learn about sex from the privacy of the internet so I would be prepared when I got married.

What started as an educational exercise, however, turned into something I thought was a fight for my eternal soul.

I begged God to take away my desires. I begged, pleaded, screamed, wracked my body with temporary scars and shaking sobs. And yet they remained. I hated myself. I thought this must be my thorn in the flesh, and in some moments I even hated God for making me this way if there was no release.

And God was someone who would first make me a sexual being, then condemn me for it. He gave me desires and needs without the means to fulfill them or the decency to end my suffering.

_______________________________________

"Your...hair...smells...good," he breathed into my ear. I'd stopped struggling — he was surprisingly strong for someone wheelchair-bound. My breast throbbed with pain as his grip tightened, my back twisted oddly as I was being pulled halfway painfully into his lap. His guardian and our professor sat across the room, talking, oblivious.

It took a long time for them to notice. Even then, my teacher did nothing — my attacker’s guardian was my salvation. As he was being pried off of my body finger by finger, he stretched to kiss me. "I don't want this to be my first kiss!" my brain screamed as I tried to twist away. He managed to plant a kiss on my jaw anyway. It occurred to me that perhaps this was God's punishment for my sexual desire — that my sexual desire made me a sexual object to be consumed against my will.

The next class, my teacher caught up with me. "So, he has wandering hands, huh? He apparently has a way with the ladies."

I was horrified. Shaken. Enraged. Confused. Terrified.

He saw...and did nothing.

And I couldn’t shake the image of God as that teacher, watching silently from across the room, doing nothing.

_______________________________________

I had just begun dating my husband, and I was quickly becoming terrified at his level of commitment to me. I tried to push him away as hard as I possibly could with the only thing I knew would surely be repugnant enough to open his eyes. I launched attack after attack, explaining how unlovable I was, how dirty I was, how worthless I was.

He batted it all aside with kindness. He spoke life and truth into my wilderness of self-hatred. He didn't see me as a project. He didn't see me as a collection of moral failures. He didn't even see me as an object for his pleasure. He saw me as a person, full of inherent worth. He saw me. And he loved me.

It took a long time to accept his love. But when I did, all I could think was, "This...this must be what Jesus is like. This is what people mean when they talk about a God of love. I haven't seen it before. This is grace, this is peace, this is hope, this is love. I understand now."

He was the first person for whom love did not include shaming or controlling me.

And God started to become someone I could love, trust, and believe in.

_______________________________________

That is...until we had sex.

"Your relationship is ungodly," my friends told me. "If he was the one God wanted for you, he wouldn't have tempted you to sin like this. The fact that you gave in to it shows you're not ready for a relationship, let alone marriage."

And I was confused, so confused. Would God really want to take away the one person who most convinced me of His goodness, simply because we made love? People kept telling me how sex before marriage could never be about love — it could only be about sinful lust and defying the work and word of God. But my experience was completely the opposite. Having sex with him had been the most loving, healing thing I had experienced in my life. And yet it was evil?

And God was someone for whom good and evil could be arbitrarily defined, no matter the consequences to His followers.

_______________________________________

"You do have some polycystic ovaries."

My breath caught in my chest and I stared at her, not quite ready to understand what she was saying. "You mean...you mean I have PCOS?" I somehow managed to keep my voice steady.

She didn't quite meet my gaze. "Yes. We'll continue with your birth control, and when you're ready to talk about having kids, come in and we'll see if you can."

I felt dizzy. My mind flitted back to a sermon that a trusted mentor once gave about Hannah and Elkanah. He posited that Hannah should have been content with Elkanah's love and not continued to ask God for children. That when women were barren in the Bible, it was God that had closed their wombs and they should unquestioningly accept God's judgment in their lives.

And God’s judgment seemed clear. He was holding all of my sins against me, and I was found lacking.

_______________________________________

After years of squelching doubts and emotions and fears, I finally began talking.

I began to tentatively share my questions, my problems, my fears with a small but growing group of people. They told me about a God who really doesn't hold past sins over our heads to beat us with. They told me about a God who understands fear, anger, pain, and doesn't shame or punish for those feelings but instead listens, loves, cherishes, and comforts. They told me about a God who isn't abusive, who isn't capricious, who isn't cruel. I hardly dared to believe them.

But there it was, that seed of hope.

And God became someone I really felt I could wrestle with, because He might really want to engage my heart and mind, no matter what that meant. Even if it meant waiting until I was ready.

_______________________________________

"My friend called me, wanted me to come over to see him at his house. I hung up the phone, and walked to the front door, and stopped. God wouldn't let me leave."

My head was pounding with a migraine that made lights blindingly bright, sounds unbearably loud, and made my stomach lurch. The preacher’s voice droned on, each rise and fall of his tone piercing my head. I held onto my husband for dear life, my only physical stronghold in an environment that made me taste fear.

"The Holy Spirit finally released me, and I walked over to my friend’s house to find people sitting on the front porch, crying. He just shot himself." My stomach lurched again, and I felt my husband stiffen beside me. "He'd been sitting in his room by the window with his gun, waiting for me. God worked salvation in my life that day. If I'd arrived any earlier, he could have shot me."

By the time the closing prayer had been uttered, I was being steered to our car — I was shaking uncontrollably from pain and rage, afraid I would be sick or pass out.

But as we drove away from the church building, my head eased, then stopped hurting altogether. My stomach calmed. Lights became normal, sounds became bearable.

And it hit me like a ton of bricks, how emotionally and physically toxic that environment was.

I looked at my husband and said, "I think this is our last Sunday."

His jaw was set grimly. "I wholeheartedly agree."

And for one day, I was convinced that God was not the monster that this man was preaching. I didn't know what He was exactly, but I knew more than I knew anything that He was not someone who would sacrifice life like that.

_______________________________________

Now? I struggle daily with my view of God. I suppose it's only natural, considering the many faces He has had in my life. I'm still sorting through them all. Some days, I don't even think He has a face. Some days, I don't think He exists — or exists in a form that isn't pure evil. 

But the struggling is worth it. Because it's finally allowed. I've seen goodness and kindness in people that makes God seem so near. I've seen interpretations of Scripture that seem like they can override the way I was taught to read and understand the Bible. I catch glimpses of a God who isn't a narcissistic sociopathic monster, and those glimpses are enough to keep me searching.

And so now, God is a mystery. But I am resting in that mystery, in the in-between of the faith of my childhood and the faith of my adulthood, waiting.

And I think He's okay with that.

Announcing the Faith and Feminism Book Club: SPEAK

[trigger warning: rape]

"I have never heard a more eloquent silence."

Melinda can't talk about what happened at the party. All she cares about now is getting through the ninth grade. Outcast, cut off from her friends, having trouble making new ones, Melinda lives day to day, barely able to open her mouth, barely able to even say to herself what happened.

This is the story of author Laurie Halse Anderson's SPEAK, an award-winning Young Adult novel. It is one of my favorite books, and in light of the Steubenville verdict this past Sunday, the parallels between the two cases are undeniable. So I've decided to re-read it. And I would like you to join me. This is a simple, low-key, online only book club, a chance for us to dive in to the same feminist literature, discuss the story and the ideas and the shortcomings and work out what these things mean for us.

And just so it's clear, this book has triggers for rape, eating disorders, verbal abuse, and emotional abuse. Don't try to go beyond limits if this book would be hard for you; self-care is important.

If you want to participate, I'll give you two weeks to find and read the book (this one moves quickly), and on Wednesday, April 3rd, we'll come back together for an open thread of discussion and thoughts and sharing.

If this first one is successful, we can start doing them once a month, eh? It would certainly help me be accountable with the reading I've been neglecting. Leave your suggestions for future books in the comments and click "like" on the suggestions you support so I can get an idea of which ones are popular.

The book is available at every major book store/online retailer, though I'd heartily suggest supporting your local, independently owned bookshops if you have them. Now let's get reading!

What (Evangelical) Men Talk About When They Talk About Women

[Trigger warning: proto-rapist apologism]

In doing research work for my book, I’ve been examining a lot of what men who are within modesty culture have to say about women. In particular, I’ve been combing through the response to the Rebelution Modesty Survey, a survey put out in 2008 by brothers Brett and Alex Harris (which spawned an online community of “Rebelutionaries” discussing and promoting modesty).

I realized that other people needed to see how these young men and boys talk about women, that there is consistent, frankly scary rhetoric these men are using when prompted to give a response to an open question. These responses in particular are to the question: "How do you feel about girls who purposely flaunt their bodies?”

So, with little further adieu, I present to you: “How Men In Modesty Culture Talk About Women.”* All emphasis mine.

Saddened; disappointed; sometimes angered. They're distracting good men, dishonoring God and marriage, and offering themselves cheaply--which makes me desire even more strongly a girl who is modest, who is valuable. I would be disingenuous if I didn't concede that these kinds of girls are a temptation. But I always remind myself that if a girl flaunts herself before I marry her, she'll do the same thing afterward. As a husband, that would make me pretty mad.What would make me happy is dedicating all my energy to loving a young woman who reserves herself for me. (Age 22)

If a girl flaunts herself, it changes everything about what I think of her. To start with, I automatically assume she is not a Christian or is not taking her walk with Christ seriously (I might even try witnessing to her). If she is a Christian, I'll probably tell her that she is being a sexual distraction (much more gently, of course). If you flaunt yourself, you have the attention of lots of guys, but you instantly lose their respect and admiration. I would never consider courting a girl that advertises her body like a product. (Age 17)

When a girl is flaunting her body, my opinion of her character lowers quite a bit. I get the strong impression that she does not respect the Biblical standards of modesty and purity, or the Biblical injunctions to avoid causing your brothers in Christ to sin. (Age 17)

It's not their body to flaunt. It belongs to Christ and their future husband. How dare they flaunt something that God did not permit them to flaunt? How dare they write a check the Bible doesn't allow them to cash? When a girl purposely flaunts her body, she is almost immediately ruled out for anything beyond acquantenance [sic] in my eyes. (Age 22)

It drives me crazy. They are the type of girls that I do not want to be around. Not only will they most likely cause me to sin, but they will not help me to grow as a follower of Christ. They also don’t display much self value and that is a big draw back. I want someone who will help me to avoid temptation, not provide me with it. When you flaunt yourself, you drive me away and sometimes actually make me physically sick. (Age 16)

I feel they need to be rebuked. I feel that they are self-consumed...or consumed in the world. Their standard of living, dressing, etc…isn’t that of the Word, but of the world. (Age 25)

Feelings are irrelevant. Scripture speaks of such women as harlots. (unspecified age between 40-49)

It actually really angers me. I find it disrespectful. I don't think they get it. Do they realize that they have just caused someone to have sexual thoughts about them in their mind? Now the guy feels bad because he fell AGAIN and the girl wiggles on her merry way. If an unsaved girl dresses this way it doesn't bother me that much, because really how would she know better? But a girl who says she is a Christian, and she says her body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. When that girl flaunts her body in a sexual way, I get really frustrated, because she should know better! Another thing I would like to know is..where is her father??!! He is a man, he knows how we think, how can he let her go out dressed like that??!! (Age 21)

Girls who purposely flaunt their bodies will get no respect from me. I would not want to have a girlfriend, or get married to somebody like that, because there are other men looking at her and thinking impure thoughts about her. Those other men may also tempt her and she may become unfaithful. (age 18)

Sickening. The disgust far outweighs the attraction. What do they expect to gain from their display?I respect and admire a girl with a dress. I totally ignore something that looks like a heathen prostitute.More of a problem is those who have remained bastions of purity, yet unknowingly take a fling in the opposite direction. You become accustomed to looking at them unguardedly, and when they suddenly change for the worst...bad things happen. (Age 19)

I don't like them. If it is purposely done, it shows a lack of respect, or understanding, for those (guys) around them and it makes it incredibly tough for us. Again, the mind thinks up a whole range of scenarios that generally aren't that good. (Age 17)

First, I feel sorry that they think they have to do that. Second, it disgusts me. Be the woman God has called you to be. Don't be a fake. (Age 25)

Although I am tempted physically by their appearance, I highly disrespect their conduct and do not find it truly attractive. (Age 19)

I feel sorry for them. They are giving freely to the world, the gift that God has given them for their husbands alone. I feel no attraction to them, as "attractive" as they may be, because of their irresponsibility pertaining to guarding their own bodies, and for not considering the mental purity of their brothers in Christ. (Age 18)

If a girl purposefully flaunts her body she loses her right to ask guys to stop looking at her like something to be had. When you flaunt your body by wearing tight clothes, low-cut shirts, short skirts and underwear that sticks out of your clothes, then you are asking to have guys stare at you. We are visual. When we see skin we look. When we see cleavage or underwear, our imagination takes over. Girls, have some dignity about yourself and don't flaunt your body and then wonder why you can't get any respect from people. (Age 19)

I usually first feel anger. "COVER UP!" I shout in my head. Then I look away. I can't look at them. So I can't talk to them. I can't really be friends with them, etc. But when I reflect on it, I feel sorry for them, because they must value their looks a lot, and esteem themselves a lot in their body, rather than in their relationship with the Lord. I also wonder if they have a healthy relationship with their father; "Does he compliment her enough? Does he show his love for her?" I also think that it shows that they do not have a close walk with God. That they are far from Him in prayer and far from His Word, or else they would realize that they need to dress modestly. (Age 22)

It makes me sick. Usually those girls are very blessed in more ways than just outward beauty, but because they choose to be flirty, they cannot use their other gifts and follow the path God has for them. They tend to get in trouble more often and cause lots of hurt by leading guys on and then breaking them apart. If you flaunt your body you are not respecting God's temple. (1 Cor. 6:19-20) "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body." If you are using your body to draw attention to yourself or are causing others (guys in particular) to stumble then you are dishonoring God by disgracing His temple. (Age 16)

Girls who try to act like strippers are going to get that response. There are always going to be guys who get turned on by clothes that show a little skin, no matter where it is, but acting as the lady that you are will mostly stop that type of thought. (Age 18)

Kind of disgusted usually. The most attractive girls I know are ones that don't try to show themselves off. It's better that way. (Age 18)

____________

*Of course not ALL men. If you say in that in the comments, you will be moderated.

Rape Culture: The Monster You Can't See

There’s not a lot I can say that hasn’t already been said over and over again about Reddit and CreepShots and the “doxing” of Violentacrez (for background, read this article). For the uninitiated, ViolentAcrez is a man who moderated a significant amount of despicably themed forums on the Internet behemoth, Reddit. He worked anonymously, but there was enough publicly available information to connect his real life identity – Michael Brutsch – to an online alter ego that posted upskirt pictures of women and moderated a forum of “jailbait” pictures of underage teen girls. Since the article's debut last Friday, he has lost his job.

Needless to say, having real life consequences for online internet activity changes the game a little, but it does not change it entirely. We like to think that people like Violentacrez (herewith “VA”) are anomalies, that “normal” people in our lives are not viewing women with dehumanized objectification in the way he clearly did. We really like to characterize these types of internet lurkers protected by anonymity as “those guys over there” rather than the man in the next cubicle over.

But what is so frightening about the VA incident is that he is not abnormal. He had a full time job. He worked in an office. He wasn’t lurking around in dark street corners and alleyways. He has a wife and a son. He is – by most societal measures – “normal.”

And this, fundamentally, is the best explanation of rape culture I can find. When VA was outed for doing things that would disgust most people, lots of fellow Redditors came to his defense. The site itself instituted a site-wide ban on the Gawker article, effectively coming to the defense of VA. VA had connections and endorsement at the highest levels of Reddit's administration and was well-respected and encouraged by both fellow moderators and the populace of the site. And he did not work alone – without the traffic from other “perfectly normal” users on the site, VA never would have been able to push the boundaries of speech as he did. CreepShots never would have existed.

Let’s discuss CreepShots for a second. It was a forum dedicated to posting upskirt photos of women in public places. One man who posted on the forum was arrested after it was revealed that he had been taking pictures of his female students in his classes. Countless other women have ended up on the site simply for being on the same subway platform as one of the users. There were Creepshots from workplaces, from public places like subway platforms and restaurants, from classrooms.

When I found out CreepShots existed, I instinctively crossed my legs and pulled up my shirt.

This is the water in which we are swimming. It is perfectly normal men violating the privacy of women, and then being defended by others when they are called on it.

I’ve heard numerous arguments in defense of VA this past week that have made me sick to my stomach. One read: “A woman forfeits her right to privacy when she enters a public place.” Yet another: “Adrian Chen [author of the article] is now responsible for ruining this man’s life.” And yet more claimed that VA was protected by freedom of speech and didn’t deserve to be outed.

The amount of white-hot white dudebro/nerdbro outrage here is not entirely shocking.

This is rape culture: a man who facilitates and encourages the violation of consent and privacy for women all over the world becomes a martyr, victim and hero rather than an ostracized sleazeball.

Women are told, once again, that they are public property, that their right to bodily autonomy doesn’t even extend to our daily commute.

The takeaway from this, for many women, is that we cannot expect that even the “perfectly normal” men around us to respect our right to bodily autonomy. We cannot expect that even people we think we know still respect us as women.

An example: this past weekend, I discovered something that almost made me delete my online dating profile. Back in July, I’d gone on a few dates with a relatively nice, 23 year old man. Things ended when he told me that he was looking for a more casual “open relationship,” which is something I don’t necessarily feel comfortable doing. We went our separate ways respectfully and I was pretty proud of myself for what I considered a dating achievement.

Then, when I was looking at my matches, a man who looked very familiar popped up. It was this dude, only he was advertising himself as 30 years old and straight (when he was dating me, he was listed as bisexual). I checked the profile he contacted me on, and saw that it was still active and still being updated. So now, someone I had once semi-trusted and respected, was representing himself as two different ages and as essentially two different men. And I don’t know that I would have suspected it had I kept dating him, because he was that good at presenting himself as “perfectly normal."

VA, to his (former) coworkers, probably came across as “perfectly normal.” Many of VA’s virulent defenders – the ones calling women cunts and bitches online while defending paparazzi style upskirt photos – are probably “perfectly normal” to the people in their offline lives. And that is the danger of rape culture – those promoting the dehumanization of women are not men lurking in alleyways with a big knife and a ski mask. They are people we pass by every day, people we have conversations with and sit next to on the train. They are perfectly normal until suddenly they aren’t.

We aren’t afraid of the monsters we know. We’re afraid of the ones who are so very good at hiding.