[LAF] Article on rapists/rape culture

[Volodya]

Don't remember if i ever pointed to this one:

Originally published in Green Anarchy some time around 2000-2001.


it'd feel so funny to be free

i've been thinking a lot about rape and rape culture lately. reading one-in-four 
statistics, running back over my life and realizing just how damn much the way i've lived 
has been affected by the basic assumption that i am not safe __________. that's the 
ultimate defining difference, i think, between those of us socialized as girls and as boys 
  we are told that, regardless of our identities, strengths, skills, we as vagina-bearing 
citizens are vulnerable. physically vulnerable. we are told this by everyone, from veteran 
uncles to our mothers to radical feminists. it is, in our culture, fact. the best we can 
do, we learn, is hope for the best and take selfdefense classes.

now, i grew up more or less apart from other gender-based limits  i was never discouraged 
in academics, hobbies, relationships, style of dress, or possible careers based on my 
gender  so i never realized how much the constant refrain of "you are at risk!" affected 
me as a female until i try to look at my life with the opposite assumption.

what a beautiful way to restrict women's movement and sense of their lives' possible 
scope! to keep them from the feeling of selfsufficiency! to make them fear their own 
company! to make them dependent on every possible facade of patriarchy, from consumerism 
to police presence to gentrification to the reassurance of hierarchy to a strong military 
to, on the personal level, having a man to walk you home so he can walk back alone himself 
in safety.

when it comes down to it, a person who is constantly, if subconsiously, under the 
influence of fear is going to extend themselves less in all their pursuits, ask less 
dangerous questions, even if there is no immediate link to the source of the fear. 
physical security over abstract freedom, almost every time. pick a fear and you can follow 
this pattern over and over again. it's one reason why us anarchopunks are mainly white 
kids with parents who, whether or not we believe they are a fallback system now, took care 
that we didn't experience true material lack in our childhoods. we don't know what it's 
like, chronically, to be hungry, so we don't fear it. and in that freedom from fear we 
feel bold enough to try any number of our stunts. vague, unarticulated, built into the 
hurry of heels over blacktop, or murmured at the water cooler; fear is far more effective 
than brick at keeping people from seeking or seeing, questioning their exploitation, or 
anything else that approaches the exercise of actual freedom.

had the story gone instead "you are safe, lisa, just as bryn is, just as most men are, to 
make any decision without considering the possible impulses of known and unknown men," i 
would have lived so fucking differently. it's one thing to be robbed, and another entirely 
to be raped... gender is often the deciding factor between those two outcomes. lord knows, 
i would have at least been hitchhiking alone by now. traveling through africa alone, 
walking across the us, sleeping in alleyways. riding trains in solitude. the way i want to 
live at this point is severely limited by the rationale that i am going to ‘put myself 
into dangerous situations.' why isn't the responsibility for creating a dangerous 
situation put on those who would rape? it's just a rewording of the argument that a short 
skirt meant she wanted it, with the accompanying reassignment of blame. i want to refuse 
both the blame and the limitations of fear now. i want to both start and finish the years 
of this woman's life it has and will take to expel this shit from inside me. in that 
sense, the system has won.

so here is what it comes down to. i personally am much better at coping with something 
negative if i consider it an eventuality, rather than a possibility. so in order to free 
myself from the constant weighing of risk, and from missing out on a whole host of life 
experiences simply because of men's violence and feelings of entitlement... i'm going to 
opt for acceptance. i know that i alone cannot change the whole culture enough to make 
women at large, or myself individually, safe from attack. but what i can do to bring peace 
into my own mind is to assume that i will be raped, and to shift all that worrying energy 
into productively facing the question:

what will my rape be like?

it's so much easier to manage fear of the known than the unknown. accepting the 
eventuality of one's own rape like a scared pregnant woman must face the reality of her 
impending birth. a sort of women's lib for our modern times. so while i've got a great big 
fuck-you for the culture that makes half its citizenry live under this fear, or choose to 
accept something so insipid, and while i salute those who fight rape culture every day, 
and most certainly while i've got some tricks up my sleeve for the men who will try it... 
i am going to trade vague and constant fear for resigned preparation.

my rape will be awful. but worse would be a failure to live free, and fully alive, because 
i was afraid of it.


-- 
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  "None of us are free until all of us are free."    ~ Mihail Bakunin