Feminists Don’t Bake Bread

I’m about to head out of town for the next four days (I know, my loyal readership of three will miss me), but I wanted to do a bit of a linkspam post before I go away. I often put these in my LJ, so this is a combination of several of them over the past several weeks.

Do y’all remember that latest “Rape Jokes are Funny” post I did a few weeks ago? (And how sad is it that I have two posts about entirely different “rape jokes are funny” incidents? If I get a third, do I get a free bad student newspaper?) If you’re curious here’s a bit of a follow-up

From Ian Van Den Hurk, Editor-in-Chief:

“I wish to formally apologize for hurting Western students, the University Students’ Council, The University of Western Ontario and members of the greater community… While the issue was not written with malicious intent toward any individuals or groups, nor the reputations of either the University of Western Ontario or the University Student’s Council,I fully understand and recognize the pain it has caused. I am truly sorry.”

The post I linked to talks about a Town Hall meeting about the whole thing, and is an interesting read. To quote:

I watched him [University Administrator Paul Davenport], in his speeches and speaking to him afterwards as well, really struggle for the “right” language to talk about these issues, and he clearly just doesn’t have it. Again, he doesn’t get it,but he’s also not, it’s clear, had the education or exposure necessary for him to really understand where everyone is coming from on this one.He hasn’t had that “ah ha!” moment where it clicks and he gets it, and he hasn’t had clearly any kind of education in issues that would allow him to speak with any intelligence, let alone authority on it.

Which, I might add, is no one’s fault but his own. It’s not our responsibility to educate him, it’s his responsibility to listen and to learn. Which is why his responses “we can do this but we need your help” (of course you need our help, you don’t understand, but you need our help to help you understand, and then you’re the one who has to take responsibility and action… but who exactly is “your” [in “your help”] in that sentence anyway? women? faculty? students?) … and “men must be front and centre on this issue” (what? I think he’s trying to say that men can’t think that this is only a women’s issue, which of course it ISN’T, but to say that men need to be front and centre on this, while so many dedicated women have been organizing and mobilizing around this for the last week, just wanting the big powerful men like Dr. D to listen to us, not to tell us what to do - is just insulting).It was also clearly a linguistic failure (rooted in an ideological failure) when he said he was glad to see so many groups “working for the weaker people of our society,” which (not surprisingly) attracted around of boos. His choice of the word “weaker” there, so clearly echoing “the weaker sex” was just so wrong.

[I think I’m going to end up coming back to that post in the future for a few other interesting quotes from it, mostly because I’ve recently been in conversation with a male friend of mine who is having trouble with the “getting it” aspect of how different life is for men and women - the sudden shock he experienced when he was confronted with the fact that most rapes are committed against women by men they know, rather than by strangers. I’m paraphrasing his reaction, here, but it took me a while to figure out that his reaction wasn’t doubt that women are usually raped by men they know, but that he had never really had to internalise that idea. I really want to talk about that, because I think it’s important, but I’m still working on expressing it well.]

A few links around or via LJ-land to share:

Am I Bitter or Am I Property?

I’m talking about girlfriends dying. Not side-kicks, not people who know the risks in a real and gritty way, but girlfriends.Girlfriends that are somehow easily replaceable because they’re not a family member or team member and who seem to come with the ready made excuse that either they weren’t the main characters true love or worse that they were.

It’s like those stories about a boy and his dog. One dog dies but it’s more than possible that if the right smart, caring dog came along, the boy’s heart will be healed and all will be well until the next time we want to pluck said boy’s heartstrings.

It’s something interesting to read after the post I linked to last week about the “You Touched My Stuff” aspect of so many “revenge” movies out there. Willow’s talking specifically about comic books in this case, but I can think of similar attitudes in books and on t.v. - that someone is really just there to be The Girlfriend That Is In Peril to goad the hero into doing the right thing.

Yay for Finland. Again.

To completely change the subject once again, yet another bit of political news from Finland that might interest (and cheer up) some people on my f-list: The names of the ministers in the new government were revealed the other day and history was again made in when of the twenty ministers twelve were women.

Is Finland part of the EU? Can I move there? Can I speak English and live there? Cuz that’s just cool. {More details on what that means in the broader picture in the link.}

From the files of WTF:

I’m been bouncing this post around in my head today about the temptation to infantilize victims of oppression and the kind of bad shit that plays into, but man, I just didn’t have a hook, other that the llama drama of a few days ago. [snip]

But their also survivors. My co-workers only meet these women on the worksites. That means that they doing hard physical labor,volunteering, to make a better future for the little girls in their hometowns. They aren’t broken shells of people, waiting for well-meaning white folks to swoop in and destroy the sex industry.They, like many exploited women in the sex industry, and like so many oppressed people around the world, are fighters. They need allies from those of us who benefit from so much suffering.

A relatively short post, but lots to think about in it.

I haven’t really examined my own attitudes about women who are trafficked into sex work around the world. I tend to just think of it in terms of “this is a tragedy that needs to stop”, without thinking about the women in question much beyond that. Which is really not much better, I suppose. The post has made me think about that more, and I’m assured that thinking is no bad thing.

I can’t quite remember where this one hit my radar from:

Blog Against Disablism Day

On Tuesday, May 1st - or as near to as you are able - post something on the subject of Disabilism, Ableism or Disability Discrimination (see Language Amnesty).You can write on any subject, specific or general, personal, social or political, anything which states an objection to the differential treatment of disabled people.

“Disabled” does include the mentally ill, for those of you who want to participate.

{More behind the cut}

(more…)

I’ve been trying for the past week to write a post about why “men get X too” is such a frustrating response to feminist writing. It’s been hard, because I’ve wanted to write something fair and balanced, looking at several different reasons why it’s frustrating, but it really comes back to one thing for me:

Why is it so wrong to focus on writing about women? What is so threatening about it?

My primary interest in writing, right now, is writing about women. I want to talk about women’s experiences and the problems women face. I want to talk about women’s issues, and women’s only spaces, and about how women are treated in the media. I want to talk about women in history. I think these are valid and important topics, ones that do deserve the time and energy to write about.

When the response to these posts is “Well, what about the men”, I get frustrated. The implication in that question is that writing about women alone isn’t good enough, that women’s issues on their own aren’t important enough. That I can’t write about women, I also must write about men, about men’s issues, because adding men makes it much more important than women could be on their own.

It’s not that I, or other writers about women’s issues, don’t care about male victims of violence, or men in history. It’s that we’ve decided to write about something else. If I decided to spend my blogging time writing about ballet dancers, I don’t think anyone would come along and say “What about tap dance?” If I wrote about World of Warcraft, would anyone demand I also take into account Star Wars: Galaxies?

I wrote a response to a comment I received on my Blog Against Sexual Violence post that I think is relevant here. A friend had commented with “A thought, though. The essay portrays rapists as male and victims as female. This is definitely the vast majority of violent rape - no argument. But how often does it happen to men when the line is simply one of discomfort? Of being falling-down drunk?”

Here is part of my response:

I’m certainly not going to object to either writing or linking to an essay about men as victims of rape - I could easily dig up a few for you to look at when I get home from work tonight, if you’d like.

The reason your comment comes across as “what about the men” is because that’s what you focused on. I didn’t talk about women being raped by other women. I didn’t talk about blackmail or non-physical threats being used to get someone to have sex. I didn’t talk about a lot of other things around rape, but of all of them, you focused on male victims of rape. This isn’t to say that your concern isn’t valid - it’s certainly a valid criticism of the article, because if nothing else I should have made it clear that the main point was the meme of victim-blaming with women (if only you do exactly the right thing, you’ll always be safe! tee hee!). And I do try to make this an okay place for those sorts of discussions, at least in my reactions to them because I think those reactions are important, those discussions are important, and that I want them to continue. But what Melle is reacting to is that, on every feminist blog that I’ve ever read or that she’s ever read where discussions of rape come up, no matter in what context, it usually gets derailed within ten to fifteen comments with some variation of “what about the men” - reminding everyone that men get raped, too, or using the societal meme of “she did something wrong” to point out that we can’t expect men to act like human beings. As though just having a conversation about women victims of rape isn’t a valid conversation all on its own.

It’s like this - if I write an essay (or you write an essay) about male victims of rape, would you want one of the comment threads to be about how women are raped? Wouldn’t that be derailing the whole point?

Women are a valid topic all on their own. They deserve to be written about without having to write about men as well. Women exist as independent from men, they existed historically, they exist in the present. They are raped, they are killed, they are mistreated. These facts are not lessened or made unimportant if someone brings up men. Too many times the response of “men are victims, too” adds some variation of “so stop your whinging”. Don’t complain, don’t speak up, because men are affected by violent crimes more than women are.

So, what is so threatening about writing about women? I’m still not certain, and maybe I never will be. I wonder if it has to do with the concept of “other”. As people far more articulate than I am have written in the past, the default view of the world is “white / male / heterosexual”. “A man walks into a bar” is just a statement, whereas “a woman walks into a bar” must have some sort of explanation for why you specify that she’s a woman.

She’s a woman because she is - and she gets to walk into the bar, too.

Women are not other. Their experiences matter. Writing about women doesn’t lessen men, it just gives women a voice.

I intellectually know better than making this post at 2 a.m. because it’s going to be rough and raw and will not be polished properly. I’m gonna do it anyway, though, because damn. Damn. This is insane.

I love this article. I do. Because it’s written like an exact “How To Belittle The Experiences Of Women and Gay People Who Talk About Harassment” Primer.

April 12, 2007 — One of them was “slightly pretty,” so the freelance film director decided to say hi.

Next thing he knew, he was encircled, beaten and knifed in the gut right there on a Greenwich Village sidewalk - by seven bloodthirsty young lesbians.

It came out of nowhere! It did! He was just walking along, minding his own business, when those lesbians (must make sure we know they’re young and lesbian) just attacked him for being friendly! That’s totally how this happened!

“The girls started coming out of nowhere,” Dwayne Buckle told a Manhattan jury yesterday, describing the bizarre beat-down he suffered last summer, allegedly at the hands of a seething sapphic septet from Newark, N.J. “I felt like I was going to die.”

“Seething sapphic septet”? That’s actually funny. I will totally give it extra points for that.

[Since it came up at work last week, Sappho was a Greek poet who wrote about loving other women. She’s from the isle of Lesbos. We get the term Lesbian from her. Without checking it in the dictionary, sapphic refers to women-focused or women-loving women type stuff. I was floored, being that I work with college graduates, that a good chunk had never heard of Sappho, which I think says more about me than them.]

Buckle, 29, of Queens, took the stand in Manhattan Supreme Court yesterday to admit he was defenseless and terrified after his simple “hello” spurred a predawn melee on Sixth Avenue at West 4th Street. Three of the original seven women are currently serving six-month jail sentences for attempted assault. But four others are on trial on first-degree gang-assault charges that could get them anywhere from three to 25 years in prison.

The accused ringleader - Patreese Johnson, 20, whom Buckle called the “slightly pretty one” - is additionally charged with attempted murder for allegedly pulling a knife from her purse and slashing Buckle repeatedly, lacerating his liver and stomach.

I want you to remember whose story was told first, and the incredibly sensationalised way it was just told. A simple hello! Defenseless and terrified! The slightly pretty one just came at him for no reason!

Hmm… That just strikes me as a bit odd. But then, I didn’t grow up in the city. And I understand girls are now meaner, and these were young lesbians, so maybe they’re part of that. Damn. Poor guy.

Oh. Wait. There was a video tape of this attack.

The women, in turn, claim they were defending themselves against a violent, anti-gay bigot, and counter that Buckle provoked them as he sat outside the IFC Center movie theater trying to talk pedestrians into buying his latest movie. When they rebuffed his advances - telling him he wasn’t their type - he began calling them “f- - -ing dykes,” they say. He then spat on them, threw a cigarette at them, and even grabbed one of them by the throat -which, like much of the melee, was caught on an IFC video security camera.

Right… that’s just “saying hello” in … some other language? Like Klingon?

“I’ll f- - - you straight, sweetheart,” he told defendant Venice Brown, 19, before choking her, her lawyer, Michael Mays, told jurors.

… You know, I don’t have a witty comment to make to that. It’s been too long a week.

Buckle told a different story on the stand, assigning many of his alleged attackers monikers. There was Brown, the one he admittedly called an “elephant.” Then there was the one with the “low haircut,” do-rag and wife-beater T-shirt,whom he admittedly called “a man,” and the “slightly pretty” one to whom he first said hello. It all started, he said, when the first two walked by. “They looked effeminate [sic] and one of them was slightly pretty, so I said ‘hi’ to them,” he said. But the “heavier girl, she started to dog me out,” Buckle said. “What does that, perchance, mean,” asked the judge, Justice Edward McLaughlin. “Just disrespect me,” Buckle explained. Then “more girls started coming out of nowhere.”

But I’m sure that he just “said hello”, right? And then suddenly seven sapphic samarai just jumped him, for no reason!

Buckle admitted he retaliated,telling the one with the “low haircut” that “she looks like a man.” He felt spit on the back of his neck, and spat back. That’s when the women’s fists began flying. “I had my hands in the air in defense of their blows,” he said. Then “I felt like a nick in my abdomen. I didn’t know what happened. “Everybody just jumped me,” he added, including three male passers-by recruited on the spot by the women. “It felt like it was 10, 20 people.” By the end, “I was messed up,” he said.

Which is, of course, earlier contradicted in this article by the mention of video evidence that he choked one of them after throwing a lit cigarette at them, blah blah. We don’t need to present the facts, though. We need sensational articles! We need it to be all about One Lone Man standing off against the Evil Seven Sapphic Sisters! Ack, the horrors of women - lesbian women, no less - and the way they’ll go at you if you let them out in groups!

So, let’s review:

- Women are just walking down the street, minding their own business, when some guy demands they buy his videos
- Women refuse, and for some reason that he’s not their type comes up
- Man starts hurling abuse at them for daring to be lesbians
- At some point a cigarette is flicked, a woman is choked, stuff like that
- Women fight back against their attacker
- Man = victim

…

Yes, I will totally agree that the man was knifed and that is horrible and bad. And yes, I will totally agree that violence isn’t the answer to street harassment (although did you hear about the woman who ignored the catcalls from a truck and the guy who was catcalling was so mad he ran over her. Last I heard she may die.).

But why the HELL is he being presented as an innocent victim in the lead in to this article? Why is it being presented as these wild and insane women (gay women!) just going off on him for no reason for the first few paragraphs?

This is my theory:

Because the women being lesbians is titilating. It’s an amusing image. It’s women’s sexuality, and we can’t make it not about the sex.

Look, I know sex sells. I do. But does it bloody well have to sell a violent attack on someone? Does it *really*? Can’t it just be about how a group of women retaliating after a gay-bashing incident? Doesn’t that make the whole thing a bit more serious? And shouldn’t the whole thing be taken a bit more seriously? The guy was knifed, for crying out loud. After attacking the women for not wanting to sleep with him. After choking one of them for… what, not wanting to sleep with him?

Why is this even considered journalism? It’s the New York Post for crying out loud. That’s… something, right?

Lord, I’m tired. If this comes across as sounding like I don’t think the women should be punished in any way, please believe me that I’m not trying to say that. They attacked him, that’s serious, and should be punished by the law.

But to pretend for just a minute that nothing else was going on here is a bit much.

I’m going to bed. Someone wake me when the revolution comes.

Just as an aside, the 36th Carnival of Feminists will be over at Fetch Me My Axe this time.

[Quick definition: Carnival of Feminists is held every two weeks. Host blogs post links and commentary to many different posts across the blogosphere about various topics. Usually the person hosting has a theme and asks people to write about said theme, but will often post posts that are not part of the theme. You can nominate your own writing, or that of someone else.]

The theme, or a theme: (write the feem tune, sing the feem tune…)

Relationships between women. Including, but not limited to: erotic and/or romantic relations, friends (”Chloe liked Olivia”), enemies, sisters (blood or otherwise), mother-daughter, grandmother-granddaughter, co-workers,co-activists, classmates, flatmates, boss-employee, domme-sub…

This is definitely one of those “personal is political” topics, but don’t feel limited to personal anecdotes: analyses of cultural trends or particular historical periods, book or film reviews, and so on, are also welcome. Also consider explorations of the mythic: Kali Ma, Gaia,other mother goddesses; relationship with any female deity or feminine aspect of the Divine, and so on.

Also welcome/encouraged:explorations of “double (or more) jeopardy” (i.e. sexism in combination with racism, homophobia, ageism, class, and so on); perspectives from outside the US/UK (and to a lesser extent, Canada and Australia).

Or, as usual, write and/or nominate an entry on any other timely feminist-related theme.

If you write something that you think qualifies and for some reason you’re too embarrassed to point it out to belledame, drop me an email or a comment and I’ll bring it to her attention. I know it can be very intimidating to point out your own writing to someone you don’t know.

Around ten months ago I started writing about Feminism on my livejournal. I didn’t call it writing about Feminism - I was just getting frustrated at trying to talk to some of the men in my life about how much I hated the overly-sexualised images of women in advertising, and talking a bit about how the covers of novels in the UK would show lots of sexualised images of women, but the only ones with sexualised images of men were erotica or romance novels. I just wanted to present out what I thought someplace without being interrupted.

Veterans of writing about “Women’s Issues” can probably predict what happened at that point.

Outrage that I would post about it, “what about the men”, “this isn’t important”… One person left a bunch of comments that were “Men get it much harder than women - look at how reproductive freedom is all about women” and got pounced on by various of my female friends for that. His response was to take his ball and go home - he deleted every comment on my LJ and banned me from posting on his.

Good times, those.

I kept dipping my toes into the water - afraid to say I was writing anything about Feminism while actually continuing to do so. I can’t quite remember at which point I decided it was okay to say I was a Feminist and to refuse to not say I was a Feminist, but I did, and things went along as they do.

To be perfectly blunt, this has not been met with much support from my friends.

There’s been nasty little posts about how all Feminists are sexist and hate men and hate SAHM and want women to be put ahead of men, followed by friends all agreeing that this is true, even after I’ve said I’m a Feminist. (In their defense, they continue to read, to question, to listen, but I still can’t get over that sting.) There’s been long comments that basically say “I’m not listening to anything you have to say or even waiting for you to clarify the point. I know exactly what you’re saying, and it’s wrong - so I’m not going to even read anything else you write in response to this comment” where the commentator had taken a perfectly reasonable suggestion (”let’s not judge our female politicians on who they’re sleeping with”) and inflated it into something else (”we should only vote for women and never judge them on their platforms”). I’ve had the concern trolls, the person who took me by the hand and said “I’m worried about how much anger you’re expressing - you can’t change the world, you know. You need to let it go, for your health”, the incredibly bitter discussion where I had to spell out to my partner that “women’s issues” aren’t exactly a special-interest when they discuss 51% of the population (as opposed to higher education issues, which discuss about 12% when last I checked the stats). I’ve had the shunning, and the attempts to trip me up, and the “you don’t care about men at all, you’re ruining valentine’s day by writing about Violence against Women, and you’re just one step short of advocating intolerance against men.”

I started FDBB because I wanted a place where I could write and not get attacked by the people who have known me for five or ten years for, it feels, daring to step out of line. This isn’t really what’s going on with all of the attacks on me, but the ones that attack me personally, that tell me I’m a bad person, that say things like “I thought you were nice“… those ones feel like a slap in the face because these are my friends.

I didn’t think anyone would read me here, but it was a nice thought.

What’s happened here is that there has been this (to me) huge outpouring of support. There have been links to individual posts and to this blog in particular, with “read this, it’s good” attached. There’s been thoughtful comments that say “I understand, I know what you mean, I’ve been here too”. There’s been emails that say “you are one of us”, “you are welcome here”, “you are good enough”.

I…

I’ve been feeling so alone, like I’ve been rolling a rock uphill and every day the rock gets heavier and the hill gets higher. I’ve been feeling like it would be so much easier to just stop caring and stop fighting and stop trying and just let it go and make life easier. I’ve been feeling so damned tired. To quote someone else who got so damned tired, I just wanted to put down the damned teaspoon and stop trying to empty the ocean. I just wanted to walk away.

To have started this blog and gotten such support, from people I’ve been reading for months, from people I thought would think I was writing such simple and easy concepts, from people who I thought would tell me to go away and come back when I was a grown-up Feminist… I can’t even tell you how it feels. I just can’t. It’s so much support, so much solidarity.

So much Sisterhood.

I’ve never understood what that meant before.

I don’t intend to make a lot of personal posts - I have a livejournal to dither in, after all, but this one, I felt, needed to be made.

I think I can pick up the teaspoon again. I don’t know how long I’ll be here, but I won’t give up hope yet.

Thank you.

A few months ago someone took me off his flist, and one of the reasons he gave me for doing so was that I had become “humourless”. I found this charge a bit odd - I mean, I still find exactly the same kind of lame humour I found funny last year funny this year, I still celebrate with glee Talk Like A Pirate Day and Sneak Like A Ninja Day. I still giggle when I read The Wotch. What the hell?

Oh. Maybe it’s that I don’t find this funny. Not even on April Fool’s Day.

Katie Conservative, another WIN member, said the march also aims to reclaim nighties from cross-dressing men who have bogarted white,crocheted, old-fashioned nighties for far too long.
“My vagina told me that for too long, men have taken things that are rightfully ours,”Conservative said. “Tonight we take back nighties just like we took back hairy armpits and stilettos, even though trannies are still trying to steal them too.”
Near the end of the march, chaos broke out when Ostrich’s vagina crawled from under flowing white nightie, stole a loudspeaker and went on a rampage.
“How dare you act like you know what I have to say,” the vagina screamed down Richmond Row.
“You don’t know me, bee-otch,” it squealed. “You can’t even see me through all this hair you’ve let over-grow. Think of me. I can’t even breathe down here!”
Upon seeing the chaos, London Police Chief Murray Faulkner stopped greasing his nightstick and intervened.
He grabbed the loudspeaker from Ostrich’s wild vagina and took it into a dark alley to teach it a lesson.
To Ostrich’s dismay, the vagina followed, giggling as it said, “I love it when a man in uniform takes control.”
Women were delighted to see groups of men standing on the sidewalks in support.
“It was so great to see men supporting us in our nighties and helping us to spread vagina peace and love,” Conservative said.
One man held a sign that read, “Yeah baby, I’ll take back your nightie anytime!”
What the marchers couldn’t see was that the men were using their penises as the beat off to the women in their long, flowing garbs.
“It takes a little imagination, but once you picture them without the nasty dreadlocks, the hideous piercings, the hairy pits and the beards, some of them are actually kinda hot,” said Cocky McFratboy, while taking a break from masturbating.
The event ended when a man sent WIN into a screaming, tribal frenzy by yelling, “You want an opinion! With a push-up bra, you could actually have a nice rack of lamb going on there!”

It’s from the April Fool’s Edition of the University of Western Ontario’s Gazette, the student run paper.

This is what I’m supposed to find funny in order to not be considered a “humourless feminist”? This?

Does it become more funny if you know the names they’re using are very similar to names of two major feminists on campus, one of whom suggested they stop making sexist and racist and homophobic commentary and claiming it as “funny”?

Oh, ha ha. I’m laughing. Yeah.

I think I’m going to pull the covers back over my head.

Right after I email the Gazette Editor-in-Chief, Ian Van Den Hurk at gazette.editor@uwo.ca, and equity services at equity@uwo.ca.

For more information, read the entire article.

[hat-tip to Juxta Feminist Cafe

This weekend is Blog Against Theocracy weekend (I didn’t know either).

I guess what gets to me about the increasing use of Christian Rhetoric and the like in our politicians is the way that the words are twisted out of their actual meaning and into something else. The Bible was written in an entirely different time and place, and it pains me to hear those words so commonly abused.

I am not a Christian, but I have studied the Bible. I think studying it is important, and gives us the lessons and words in context. We can’t pretend the Bible hasn’t affected our world. I think teaching the Bible and the messages in it with proper historical and socio-economic background would eliminate so many of the problems with the current theocracy bent in the US and elsewhere.

I wrote this some time ago for livejournal, but I don’t think it becomes any less meaningful over time.

I just want to get this out of the way because man it’s come up a lot lately.

YO EVERYONE! If you’re going to quote something in the Bible, can you please try and remember it’s socio-political background and take that into account when attempting to sort out its meaning?

Thus, the statement “Turn the other cheek” does not mean “walk away from a problem”. Not in the context in which Jesus said it, not in that place, in that time. It doesn’t mean “Let them hit you again until they stop”, either, which is what used to be told to some women who complained about domestic violence to some pastors and some priests.

The quote:

Matthew 5:38-48

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”

If someone has struck you on the right cheek, chances are they’ve used the left hand to do so. In the culture Jesus was raised in, in the culture he was preaching to, hitting someone with the left hand was the height of… rudeness, arrogance, indicating that someone was so incredibly beneath you that you could hit them with the same hand you used to wipe yourself with after going to the bathroom. It was the hand you used for unclean tasks because the hand was unclean.

What that quote means, in context, is if someone has treated you with such disrespect that they see you as unclean, tell them to hit you again with the right hand - to touch you as though you weren’t unclean, to treat you as though you weren’t seen that way.

The other possibility, of course, is that they’ve backhanded you. As this website says: Backhanding does not happen in a fair face-off. Backhanding is an insult, punishment, or just plain abuse. Back then it represented a clear situation of oppression or dominance.

Offer the other cheek. You are not fighting back, but neither are you meekly taking it. You are asking for more. You may get it or you may not, but either way you’ve made a point or two. You are not exactly what they think you are, and you know it; you are a person, and deserve more equal treatment and respect as a person; you are aware of the truth behind the fraud. You are amplifying awareness of, and insulting,their bullying behaviour and the system that allows it.

The follow up quote, about the tunic and the cloak? If you owed someone money, they would take your tunic at night, every night until you paid the money, leaving you just your cloak to wear. (Consider that - I owe the bank money through my credit card right now. If they could show up every night until I paid off my balance and take my shirt but leave me my coat?) This was, again, Jesus telling people to stand up and point out the unfairness of what was going on.

The last part there, the walking a second mile: Romans could require any subject of the Empire to carry a soldier’s pack for a mile. This was saying something different than the other two… It was saying make yourself noticed, because anyone who would willingly agree to walk a second mile with the soldier would, one would hope, be noticed by the soldier - and the soldier would want to find out why, would want to talk, would then learn about this pack-animal that he’d chosen at random.

These things taken out of context lose all their meaning and can be twisted around. Jesus was not a non-violent person - one can see that in the Scriptures. A man who violently throws people out a temple isn’t non-violent. But he also didn’t go around insisting that everyone had to grab the nearest weapon and beat everyone into submission. What Jesus is saying here is simple:

Treat others with respect. Require others treat you with respect.

Or, the more familiar - “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

It makes me so sad how often that message is lost in the background.

[A similar point was made during Blog Against Sexual Violence Day here, about not using the Bible to justify victims of abuse suffering in silence. I highly encourage you to read it as well.]

Everybody agrees that rape is a bad thing.

Whether it’s being used as a threat, being employed in combat, happens to your friend, your sister, your cousin, that woman across the street, the man who works at your local pub, we all agree: rape is bad. It’s wrong. It’s the worst crime that can be committed against a person, to the point where people will use it to describe severe emotional trauma. “I felt violated - it was like I was raped. It was like my soul was raped.”

Rape is bad.

What is a subject of intense disagreement is “What is rape?” The answer to this completely covers the spectrum, from Bill Napoli’s insistence that rape only counts if it happens to a virginal Christian woman and involves much violence and sodomy to “It’s rape if you feel at all pressured”. We don’t agree. We’re all talking about something entirely different, and this is where problems are happening. This is where people get confused.

This is where we get two conflicting ideas: that all rapists are horrible monsters, and that men should fear being falsely accused of rape.

As long as we keep having these conflicting definitions and ideas of rape, we can’t talk about rape. It stays undefined by society. The law may say one thing, but people say and feel and think and believe another. All the “no means no” advertisements in the world aren’t going to make a difference when we don’t even agree on what “no” is.

What I think is important if we’re going to move forward on this is to discuss what we’re taught about rape, and how we’re taught it.

Media Depictions of Rape

When I think about rape on t.v., in movies, and in books, I’m always reminded of The Accused. For those that haven’t seen it, the movie is about a “trashy” woman who is brutally gang raped. It begins with her running from the bar where it happened, screaming and naked, and ends with one of the men who watched the whole thing telling what he saw, narrating the event as the viewing audience watches his flashback.

More often than not, the media depicts the “stranger rape” - the violence, the monster in the alleyway, the woman struggling and screaming and begging to be let go. There’s bruising, sometimes blood. She’s often shown as a complete wreck afterwards.

Quite often when the media does show an acquaintance or date rape scene, things are just as cut and dried. She definitely struggles. He uses excessive force, is shown to be violent beforehand, or she’s shown being drugged. She’s usually begging him to stop, or is crying. She’s often shown as a complete wreck afterwards.

This creates an image of what is a “proper” and “real” rape, and how an “actual” rape victim will react. It makes a very clear image of an “actual” rapist, as well - he’s a monster.

How To Avoid Rape - What We Tell Women

I did several Google searches on “how to avoid rape” and “how to prevent rape“, since these will be more objective than my recollections of what I was taught, but all the sites I looked at supported the same sorts of things:

“Avoid situations and lifestyles that could lead you to be raped.”

Women are often told:

- Don’t go out drinking
- Don’t go into dark places
- Always get ID from anyone you let into your flat to do any work
- Watch what you wear (”Avoid dressing seductively: “Action”, they say, “speaks louder than words”. When a woman or girl dresses half-naked, she is saying through her action, “I am available to any man that needs me”. When you dress seductively, you are exposing yourself to the danger of being raped.“)
- Fight back as hard as you can, as strongly as you can
- Don’t go out alone

In other words, the vast majority of the things women are told are designed to prevent Stranger Rape - the rapist-as-monster. They’re also presented often as a set of rules that will “prevent” a woman from being raped - don’t do this, don’t do that, listen to me and you’ll be safe.

How To Not Rape A Woman - What We Tell Men

There are significantly less hits for “How Not To Rape“.

Having spoken to several men on the topic, what I’ve gathered they’re taught is:

- No means no
- Don’t hit women

In other words, men are taught about how to not “date rape” a woman.

These are three entirely different, very simplified, ideas about rape. They primarily put the onus on women - the implication is that only certain types of women get raped, only certain types of behaviour lead to women being raped, and women have to react in certain ways in order to be considered a true victim of rape.

This makes it easy to spot the victim, spot the rapist. It means never having to consider what rape is about, what rape statistics show us. Rape victims vary from infants and toddlers up to great grandmothers in long term care homes. The vast majority of them know their rapist. A significant number are related to their rapist.

As long as we fall into these ideas that “no means no” is the only thing men have to learn about preventing rape, we perpetuate the idea that men don’t need to, or can’t, learn anything else.

As I’ve said before, I think better of men than that.

This is what I think needs to change:

How To Avoid Being Raped

- Don’t blame the victim. A woman dressing sexy is not an invitation to every man. Even if she’s going out with the express intention of picking up a man for sex that night, she is not expressing intention to have sex with every man she sees. A woman going out drinking with friends, or strangers, or on her own, is not inviting herself to be used sexually by every man who sees her. She’s simply going out and drinking. Saying yes to some sex, or some sexual acts, is not saying yes to every sexual act, to all sex. Sometimes, not fighting just means the victim was too scared.
- Communicate, to the best of your ability, what you mean, what you want, and what you’re comfortable with in regards to sex and sexual play.
- If you are attacked by a stranger, do whatever it takes to stay alive.

How To Avoid Raping Someone

- Act at all times like the women you’re with are people. A woman dressing sexy may mean she wants to have sex - but it doesn’t necessarily mean she wants to have sex with you. If she’s falling down drunk, it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to have sex with her. If you’re falling down drunk, it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to have sex with her. Remember - alcohol impairs your judgement too, and what may be a clear communicator of “no” when you’re sober may not seem like it when you’re drunk.
- Communicate, to the best of your ability, what you mean, what you want, and what you’re comfortable with in regards to sex and sexual play.
- 60% of communication is in body language. Don’t pretend this isn’t true. If the person you’re with is acting uncomfortable ask them if they’re uncomfortable. If the person you’re with is pushing you away, ask them if they’re uncomfortable. If the person you’re with is shaking their head, ask them if they’re uncomfortable. Men are not monsters. They are not animals. They are not driven wild with lust at the sight of an attractive woman. They will not die of blue balls if they don’t get sex right now. It is not a hardship to ask someone who is behaving uncomfortably if they are okay with things. To say otherwise is to say bad things about men, and you may want to question the motives of people who are doing this.

Yes, we can change the world. Tell your friends what I’ve said. Tell them that rapists are not the monsters who leap out from dark alleys. Tell them that women can be raped by men who refuse to acknowledge a shove away, who conveniently forget when a woman’s told him she doesn’t want sex, who takes a drunk woman to bed even though she’s too drunk to stand, who assume her short skirt is an invitation, who act like men are animals who cannot control themselves, their sex drive, their lust. Tell them that in these simple actions, in these refusals to blame the victim, in these decisions to treat women like they’re people and men like they aren’t monsters, we can change the world.

Tell them.

I apologise for not responding to the thoughtful comments on my previous post. They changed my hours at work, and I’ve had less time to do things as a result.

I’ll do my best to respond tonight. After a nice long nap.