The Politics of Sexual Violence

Rape, Identity and Feminism

A. Healicon

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137461728
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Criminologie

With the recent media interest in celebrity childhood sexual abuse and rape cases, we think we know what sexual violence is and who 'rape victims' are. But this portrayal is limited. Drawing on in-depth accounts from women who have experienced rape, this book revisits issues of credibility, responsibility and feminism to provide missing details.

1

Sexual Violence

Abstract: Chapter 1 outlines the purpose of the book which is to examine the obvious and obscure processes of compartmentalisation and categorisation that define what sexual violence is and who ‘rape victims’ are, with particular focus on Rape Culture in its trivialisation of rape and the psychological discourse of harm which sensationalises the ‘rape victim’. To set the parameters of the book, sexual violence is defined in relation to compartmentalisation, the methodology is outlined, and participants are presented.

Healicon, Alison. The Politics of Sexual Violence: Rape, Identity and Feminism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137461728.0002.

My experiences with the term [victim] almost universally involve revealing to someone relatively uninformed that I’ve been raped by someone not known to me ... One memorable response was ‘oh, so it was a stranger rape then?’ The tone of the conversation changed completely from that moment. She wanted to know the details. Would it help me to talk about what he did, she wondered? The voyeurism was dripping from every single word. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had conversations where I’ve experienced the sigh and the ‘oh, one of those’ reactions when you say the man who raped you was someone close to you as well. There’s usually no voyeurism there – just a strained sympathy underlined with the implication that, well, that doesn’t really count then, does it? What I’d like to be better understood is that neither of these reactions is the right one. Neither is supportive. Neither is what we want women to receive when we talk about rape. We can get so caught up in our anger at the lack of acknowledgement and denial of the seriousness of rape that it almost seems like the ‘shock and awe’ reaction must be one to envy. It isn’t. It’s based on an entirely mythical conception of what the harm of rape is, and the nosiness and voyeurism surrounding something people believe to be horrific but rare. It’s the cliff edge where the conversation changes from one involving you as a living, breathing person, to one about a myth in someone else’s mind.

(Lyra)

Recent media interest in historic childhood sexual abuse and rape, perpetrated within institutions and by celebrities, has promoted an awareness of sexual violence and its psychological impact. However, this particular cultural framing of sexual violence is problematic because it regurgitates rape mythology and pop psychology misrepresenting sexual violence and those who have experienced rape. This book, therefore, investigates and critiques the obvious and obscure processes of compartmentalisation and categorisation, which define what sexual violence is and who ‘rape victims’ are, particularly within Rape Culture and the psychological discourse of harm (O’Dell 2003). Contemporary Rape Culture normalises and therefore trivialises male sexualised violence, compartmentalising and ranking ‘types’ of rape according to assumed severity and rarity. The psychological paradigm sensationalises the supposed symptoms of the traumatised ‘rape victim’. In a process of categorisation, through pathologisation and diagnostic criteria that provide the psy-professional with tools to assess her credibility and ascertain her complicity, she is (re)produced as disreputable and diminished. Both Rape Culture and the psychological paradigm rely on a fixed and inevitably gendered essentialism that denies female agency and blames women for their own victimisation. The individualism of victim-blaming also absents from critical analysis those who are really responsible for orchestrating, perpetrating, ignoring, and excusing sexual violence.

The processes of compartmentalisation and of categorisation are problematic, as Lyra suggests, because both preclude the possibility of continuing as a ‘living, breathing person’. In rape, Winkler (2002) asserts the ‘victim’s’ sense of self is destroyed so she no longer recognises the person she was and is. In the aftermath of rape, this dehumanisation is reproduced in secondary encounters with others’ expectations and judgements (Brison 2002). Standing on a metaphorical ‘cliff edge’ the individual is either recognised as legitimate, a ‘proper victim’, and invited into the ‘rape victim’ identity position, or rendered unbelievable and excluded from categorisation (Butler 2004). The type of sexual violence she experienced contributes to her assessment as credible. Whether recognised or not, she is defined in relation to myths and presumptions. In order to advance an alternative account that might sustain her as a ‘living, breathing person’, this research is grounded within the concerns of 12 women who have experienced rape either as a child and/or as an adult. Their priorities are supported in a supplementary review of reports, policy, memoirs, and media debate. The nuance and detail in women’s accounts challenge the oppositional politics of compartmentalisation and restrictions of categorisation, which inhibit the accurate reflection of experience. The subtleties within these accounts highlight the need for a social and political, rather than psychological, response that avoids pathologisation, trivialisation, or indeed sensationalism.

The approach pursued in this book prioritises women’s accounts and engages critically with feminist theory and practice. Feminism is historically and practically significant as an alternative and political response to sexual violence (Jones and Cook 2008) in spite of episodic backlashes that propose its irrelevance (McRobbie 2009) and state interventions into the feminist voluntary sector that tend towards its depoliticisation (Matthews 1994; Whittier 2009). However, the processes of compartmentalisation of sexual violence as either serious or trivial, and the categorisation of ‘rape victims’ into credible or responsible, are challenged as they appear within the feminism of Roiphe (1993), Herman (2001), Brownmiller (1975), and MacKinnon (1995) as well as the activism of SlutWalk. Offered instead is an attempt at an ethical approach that both rejects the essentialism of the enduring and inevitably female victim, and locates trauma within the context of power dynamics and structural inequalities. Drawing from women’s accounts, feminism is both critiqued and reiterated as crucial to the possibility of living differently.

Compartmentalising rape

Defining rape is both complicated and unequivocal. Academic and fieldwork definitions have changed over time and are inevitably limited. For example, within feminism, sexual violence encompasses rape, sexual assault, and childhood sexual abuse, but locating experience within structural and gendered inequalities demands the addition of a range of oppressive sexualised behaviour such as ‘forced marriage, sexual harassment and stalking, trafficking and sexual exploitation, crimes of honour and female genital mutilation’ (Coy et al. 2007: 4). The sex and gender of the perpetrator and ‘victim’ matters too. In terms of scale alone, feminism suggests it is mostly men who sexually victimise mostly girls and women. Within policy and the caring professions, though, rape and sexual violence are not gender specific but the product of faulty or disadvantaged families (Healicon 2012; Doyle 2006). Disparate definitions and explanations contribute to the compartmentalisation of sexual violence and the categorisation of the ‘rape victim’. For example, within policy women who have been raped and were drunk are questionably credible (Itzin 2006), and those with unspent criminal convictions are excluded from claiming criminal injuries compensation (May and Featherstone 2011), suggesting some women are more deserving ‘victims’ than others.

Fundamentally, rape as it is documented in UK legislation (National Archives 2003) is the non-consensual penile penetration of the vagina, mouth, or anus. Consent, recently defined in the 2003 Sexual Offences Act, is the freedom and capacity to choose to have sex. The ‘victim’ is incapacitated and therefore unable to make this choice if there is violence, the threat of violence, if she is unlawfully detained, asleep or unconscious, or was unable to communicate her consent through physical disability or drugs. It is stipulated that under 16s do not have the capacity to consent. Within the confines of this specific statutory definition, there is no requirement for physical violence, or to establish the relationship between the individuals, or to evidence how they presented themselves. Ideological and practical matters obstruct cultural access to the legal definition and the embodied experience of rape. Rape mythology and victim blaming, implicit within institutional practices, obfuscate experiences of sexual violence, polarising interpretation. There is a chasm between the lived experience and the cultural articulation of rape.

For example, Marhia (2008) found the media was highly selective in its reporting of rape, with a disproportionate representation of the most violent and aggravated stranger rapes, cases leading to conviction, or rapes involving underage girls. Furthermore, rape is depicted as isolated incidents resulting from individual pathology rather than a pattern within the wider social and political context. Polarisation of experience, as a motif, demonises perpetrators and further victimises ‘victims’. In the representational sphere, the malicious ‘girl who cried rape’ is pitted against the falsely accused and ‘wronged man’ (Marhia 2008). These tropes are especially prominent in the reportage of recent historical sexual abuse trials involving celebrities in the wake of the Jimmy Savile investigation, but with an additional polarisation: our more knowledgeable and proactive present is contrasted with the collusive and ignorant past. In policy, criminal justice remedies are prioritised (Phipps 2010), consequently accentuating the most recent, violent, or evidential of cases so that women who do not report are perceived as a criminal justice problem rather than requiring different services. In the sexual violence field, Lyra anticipates different responses depending on whether she is speaking of intimate partner or stranger rape.

The gap between the representation and experience of rape, evidence of the process of compartmentalisation, is similarly exaggerated within the feminism of Roiphe’s (1993) early critique of the concept of ‘date rape’, which had catastrophic consequences for feminism’s authority to define rape and ‘rape victim’ identity (described further in chapter two). In her article, Date Rape’s Other Victim Roiphe (1993: np) suggests that rape has become a catch-all definition, that ‘has stretched beyond bruises and knives, threats of death or violence to include emotional pressure and the influence of alcohol. The lines between rape and sex begin to blur.’ Disregarding the acknowledgement of emotional coercion as a precursor to rape, as the misguided and scaremongering ideology of ‘rape crisis feminists’, her main concern with this ‘blurring’ is for date rape’s other victims: those women victimised by a feminism that does not differentiate between victims of rape jokes and rape, and takes ‘struggle’, ‘power’, and ‘pursuit’ (Roiphe 1993: np) out of female sexuality. Moreover, to insist on the harm of ‘date rape’, the ‘gray [sic] area in which one person’s rape may be another’s bad night’ (Roiphe 1993: np) undermines the significance of real and ‘brutal’ rape. Indeed, Roiphe (1993: np) suggests, ‘if we are going to maintain an idea of rape, then we need to reserve it for instances of physical violence, or the threat of physical violence’.

Although Roiphe attempts to articulate personal lived reality, which she feels is misrepresented in feminist definitions of sexual violence, her writing purposefully opposes ‘bad night’ and ‘brutal rape’. Within both public and some feminist debates, then, the articulation of rape relies on this process of compartmentalisation, the organisation and ranking of certain behaviour and experiences through trivialisation and sensationalisation. For Mardorossian (2014) this does more than excuse the perpetrator and blame the victim, as it is only in the most exceptional and violent cases that the perpetrator-as-monster is deemed responsible. Indeed, this particular process functions to reproduce structural inequalities. Mardorossian (2014) suggests the structural, rather than biological, positions of hegemonic masculinity and feminised ‘other’ are imposed in rape. This reproduction of structural oppression is exacerbated in sensationalising and thereby legitimising physically violent rape as the defining experience. The gap is extended further in the trivialisation and denial of most other rape encounters. These polarised and ranked experiences lose depth and complexity (Phipps 2015), validating the gap, as alternative and nuanced experiences are excluded, but which are noticed within accounts from women:

And you can look at it as just one person’s act against one other person and I guess especially in recent years, media coverage always hones in on these very extreme cases ... where it is really easy to just kind of take that individual perpetrator and really vilify them and turn them into something that is so evil and non-human and different to us as ‘normal’ people who don’t do things like that. But really we do and it’s happening all the time, everywhere to lots and lots of people. (Violet)

There was a sort of a feeling ... if it had been sink estates and working class families we wouldn’t be shocked but because you are painting a picture of people that wear Marks and Spencer clothes and drink gin and tonic and go abroad on their holidays, that’s messing with our heads. (Caitlin)

But there was an element of somebody who you trusted doing that to you. Who then could you trust? ... Whereas if it was outside, I’m not saying it’s worse in or out, but in your own home where you are supposed to be safe and with my children in ... . (Eliza)

... she said ‘I know how you feel because I was sexually abused when I was 12’, but that just made me feel awful because I thought that’s so much worse than what’s happened to me. (Ruby)

In these accounts women both identify, and are affected by, cultural assumptions that bear little resemblance to their experiences of rape. It is presumed sexual violence is confined to disadvantaged communities or is the product of an evil individual, and that stranger and child rape are worse than adult rape by someone known. However, in their assertion of difference from these cultural presumptions, women recognise their exclusion. In trivialisation and sensationalisation not only are these extremes of experience reduced and ‘flattened out’ (Phipps 2015), but women judge themselves and are ranked, silenced, and excluded from debates and services. Roiphe intended to take rape seriously, so rightly questioned the denial of an active female sexuality and the inevitability of traumatisation, themes prioritised in this book. However, in deploying compartmentalisation to argue women’s responsibility and trivialise the violence of language, Roiphe reproduces rather than challenges a cultural representation of rape that precludes the material reality of women’s experiences. Gay (2014: 135) challenges this insistence on the difference between the representation of rape and real experiences of rape to suggest conversely that ‘[w]e cannot separate violence in fiction from violence in the world no matter how hard we try.’ It is not about judging severity in order to assess the legitimacy of the experience and the individual. Rather, certain language and representations are deployed to trivialise and conceal the real meaning and experience of rape, so although ‘we talk about rape ... we don’t talk carefully about rape’ (Gay 2014: 132). An ethical exploration of sexual violence is required. One that respects women’s experiences without excusing the perpetrator. For Cahill (2001: 112) ‘women’s experiences must be articulated and respected’; otherwise, the implications of rape are more easily denied.

In an attempt to write sexual violence ‘carefully’, a note is required on the terminology employed in this book. As the study considers the contemporary categorisation of the ‘rape victim’, priority is given to women’s experiences of rape that occurred on one or more occasion, at any point in their lives, as it is legally defined. Although not all participants in this study named their experiences as rape, it was agreed that ‘rape’ is an accurate description. However, whilst ‘sexual violence’ and ‘childhood sexual abuse’ are deployed to denote a variety of sexualised behaviour including rape imposed upon a non-consenting adult or child, when associated directly with participants these terms signify rape. This is not to obfuscate the experiences of rape, but rather to avoid repetitive writing. ‘Abuse’ is recognised as problematic, both obscuring the dehumanisation and objectification of a person, and acknowledging a broader range of behaviour not limited to physical violence. ‘Re-victimisation’ is also problematic, and when used here it denotes a pattern of systematic rape rather than suggesting that she is prone to repeated incidents. Unless otherwise stated, the perpetrator is male, and because of the way in which the cohort was recruited, all participants are female. This is not to deny sexual violence against boys and men nor the perpetration of abuse by women, but rather to recognise that within this contemporary historical and social context, sexual violence is articulated as a gendered relation.

Situating the research

Twelve women chose to become involved in this research in order to challenge the compartmentalisation of sexual violence and the categorisation of the ‘rape victim’ identity position. They felt their embodied reality was constrained by others’ assumptions, ignorance, and judgements. Making sense of their experiences of sexual violence is a moral and ethical issue (Rowntree 2009), and in spite of the difficulties of speaking out loud, women offered to articulate publicly the nuances of their lives. Not only to counteract stereotypes and labels, but also, in providing a personal resource for those working in the field (Jordan 2008), women who participated in this research hoped to educate others in order to improve organisational response. For example, Eliza says:

I told (my sister) that you was coming tonight and I regret saying I’d do (the interview). That was just for a moment. She said ‘You’re bloody stupid you. Will that make you feel any better?’ so I said ‘well yes it will after’. Because I feel like I might make some small contribution to help other women. Not personally for me. But it is for me, cos it makes me (feel better). Maybe if she just takes one sentence that I’ve said. If she takes a sentence out of what everybody says, that’ll add up won’t it?

Eliza overcame her fear of disclosure because she wanted her account to help others feel less stigmatised. It matters to women who have experienced sexual violence and those working in the field that they are typically unheard or misconstrued; therefore, an ethical and responsible research approach is imperative. Woodward (2000) identified three significant responsibilities that became apparent as researcher of written narratives of childhood sexual abuse. Hearing personal experiences of trauma is an especially privileged position, and representing the voices of others requires not only the accurate reflection of content and meaning, but also an articulation of the researcher’s agenda and methods. For, as Coffey (1999) suggests, research concerns mutuality and the co-construction of on-going interaction and interpretation. In documenting other’s experiences, the researcher speaks from a position of authority, on behalf of women, and as such some discussion of her suitability to this task is required.

Woodward highlighted the importance of locating the author in the research process, but Eliza suggests another important responsibility: to make a difference in people’s lives. Kelly (1988: 73) summarises it thus: feminist research insists upon, ‘a commitment which includes not condoning abuse explicitly or imp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Sexual Violence
• 2  Identity
• 3  Credibility
• 4  Responsibility
• 5  Agency
• 6  Practice
• Bibliography
• Index